America News Agency

A DBS spokesperson told the BBC, "The reduction in workforce will be a natural attrition as temporary and contract roles disappear over the next few years."

Permanent employees are not expected to be affected by the cuts. The bank’s outgoing CEO, Piyush Gupta, also said he expects to create around 1,000 new AI-related jobs.

This makes DBS one of the first major banks to provide details on how AI will impact its operations.

The company did not specify how many jobs would be cut in Singapore or which roles would be affected.

DBS currently has between 8,000 and 9,000 temporary and contract workers. The bank employs approximately 41,000 people in total.

Last year, Gupta stated that DBS had been working on AI for more than a decade.

"Today, we deploy over 800 AI models across 350 use cases, and we expect their measured economic impact to exceed 1 billion Singapore dollars ($745 million) by 2025," he added.

Gupta is set to leave the company by the end of March, with current deputy president Tan Su Shan taking over.

The continued spread of AI technology has highlighted both its benefits and risks, with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) stating that AI will impact around 40% of jobs worldwide by 2024.

IMF President Kristalina Georgieva said that "in most scenarios, AI will further exacerbate overall inequality."

Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey told the BBC last year that AI would not be a "mass job destroyer" and that human workers would learn to work with new technologies.

Bailey also noted that despite the risks, AI has "great potential."