The finance professionals most afraid of AI are 28-year-old credit trading VPs in Hong Kong
Are you afraid of AI taking your job? Join the club. We recently conducted a survey on AI in finance, asking roughly 2,500 people whether they were afraid of being replaced by AI. 29% of professional respondents said they were, but some groups were much more afraid than others.
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We’ve looked in depth at the identities of respondents to this question, including their age, location and sector to see who, in theory, is the group most afraid of AI.
Most concerned: 28-year-old credit trading VPs in Hong Kong
APAC had the highest percentage of professional respondents who said they were either ‘concerned’ or ‘very concerned’ about being replaced by AI, with 43% responding with one of the two answers. Among countries with 30+ respondents, Hong Kong was the most negative, with more than 40% expressing their concern.
Sales and trading, meanwhile, was the most fearful sector in finance. Credit sales and trading is particularly afraid, with 48% of respondents actively employed in the space saying they’re concerned. It’s a space that is increasingly exposed to electronification, and the big cumbersome banks that have dominated the market are also facing competition from market makers and prop trading firms that run with significantly smaller headcounts.
The other factors were negligible. Fear over AI is pretty evenly split between men and women, marginally tipping towards the latter, whereas 26-30-year-olds as a group were just 1% more fearful than 18-25-year-olds.
One respondent matched this description entirely, except for the fact that she was based in Singapore. She said that she’s “not really sure how to be prepared” for the incoming storm of AI. She said that the technology can cover “basically all my tasks” and that she’s looking at options to change career before it’s too late.
It’s not just younger traders who are scared. A female Singaporean credit trading professional in her late 30s said that AI is “super scary” and that it will “eventually kill” her industry.
Interestingly, when looking only at who answered that they were ‘very concerned’ about AI, the hypothetical profile is similar, but different: a 26-year-old male Singaporean credit trading VP.
Least concerned: 50 year old Italian asset managers
Finance is a relationships-based industry, so it’s unsurprising that the group least afraid of being replaced is the group that has spent the most time building those relationships. Respondents aged 50+ were the most likely to say that they were ‘not concerned at all’ about being replaced by AI.
49% of respondents on the buy-side said they had no fear of AI, the highest of any sector. Asset managers and private equity professionals were particularly unperturbed.
Italy had the lowest rate of concern with AI among professionals; more than half of respondents had no fears. The next least afraid was the US at 46% of respondents.
It helps that older professionals are the people making the hiring decisions. One Italian hedge fund PM said that AI will make things much easier for him in the future as there will be “no junior analysts needed.
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