* HSBC ( HSBC ) CEO says staff need to embrace AI-driven change

* Bank focuses on retraining staff

* Rival StanChart plans to trim 7,000 roles driven by AI

By Selena Li

HONG KONG, May 20 (Reuters) - HSBC ( HSBC )

Chief Executive Georges Elhedery said on Wednesday AI would

destroy and create certain jobs in the financial industry, and

the bank was retraining its workforce to meet the challenge.

Elhedery told an HSBC ( HSBC ) investor day event that staff needed

to embrace AI-driven change rather than resist it and work with

the bank on navigating the new technology.

"We all know generative AI will destroy certain jobs and

will create new jobs," Elhedery said.

"But my initial mission is I need 200,000 colleagues with

us on this journey. However many will be left at the end of the

journey isn't the problem.

"The problem is how can we make sure that those 200,000

colleagues have been given all the capabilities, the training,

the tools to make themselves future ready, be more productive

versions of themselves."

Elhedery said HSBC ( HSBC ) staff needed to ensure they were "not

fighting us, not disenfranchised, not anxious, overwhelmed, and

resisting the change."

The CEO of Europe's largest bank spoke just a day after

rival Standard Chartered ( SCBFF ) announced it would

slash thousands of jobs in the coming years, the first among

global banks to explicitly reveal AI's impact on its workforce.

Speaking during an investor day event, StanChart chief Bill

Winters said the bank wanted to replace "lower-value human

​capital" with technology and other investments.

He said the jobs affected were mostly non-client facing.

The emerging market-focused lender said it would cut 15% of

its corporate function roles by 2030, which, according to a

Reuters calculation, would result in more than 7,000

redundancies out of the more than 52,000 people working in such

roles.

AI FOR COST SAVINGS

The comments from HSBC ( HSBC ) and StanChart show the world's top

financial institutions are increasingly cost sensitive and

scrambling to integrate frontier AI models and fend off rising

cyber threats. Japanese lender Mizuho in March unveiled

up to ​5,000 job cuts over a decade.

HSBC ( HSBC ), which in March appointed David Rice as ‌its first

chief AI officer, has highlighted AI ⁠as the key to the bank's

wider strategic goal ​of increasing its returns, via savings

from automating and streamlining its processes.

The bank is deploying AI across multiple functions and

businesses to simplify operations and personalise content to

customers, Elhedery said.

Its customer onboarding and Know Your Customer function,

financial risk and monitoring, contact centres, and wealth

management, are also undergoing an AI revamp, according to an

investor presentation from the bank.