ANZ chief executive Nuno Matos told a parliamentary hearing in Canberra on Thursday that if artificial intelligence drove job cuts of up to 50%, "it's going to be a global crisis", HRD reported. He said he couldn't yet tell whether AI would be good or bad for jobs overall, and that none of ANZ's recent cuts were caused by the technology, though he couldn't promise there would be no AI-related losses later.
His advice to workers was practical: those who build AI skills lower their risk.
Katrina Shanks, chief executive of the Australian and New Zealand Institute of Insurance and Finance (ANZIIF), makes a similar case for insurance, albeit with a far less alarming soundbite. "It's not a matter about what's going to happen to your role, it's how you can enhance your role," she told Insurance Business’s Daniel Wood. "I think the real risk is you're not ready for what 2030 is going to look like."
Shanks expects roughly 30% of a role to look different by 2030. The World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs Report 2025 is in the same range, with employers expecting 39% of workers' core skills to change by 2030, down from 44% in the 2023 edition and 57% in 2020.
Jobs and Skills Australia’s Generative AI Capacity Study, released in August 2025, found about 4% of the workforce is in occupations highly exposed to automation, while 79% is in occupations with low exposure. Nearly half of all workers sit in jobs with low automation but medium augmentation exposure, so AI is more likely to change how their work is done than to take it over.
The automation risk is concentrated in routine clerical and administrative roles. JSA’s illustrative modelling also puts financial and insurance services among the five industries that would lose the most employment by 2050, compared with its baseline projections. For insurers and brokerages, that overlaps with much of the processing work in claims, underwriting support and account administration..
The skills Shanks wants people building are mostly human ones: critical thinking, empathy, communication, adaptability, resilience and a habit of learning. "Everybody has to be AI-enabled and understand AI," she said.
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Shanks' biggest hope for AI is productivity, and she says individuals are capturing most of it so far. Staff are using Microsoft Copilot to research, draft emails and summarise reports, and AI agents that interpret information and take actions for the user are the next step. "It's that personal productivity where I think we're seeing the greatest gain at the moment," she said.
Platform change across whole organisations is slower, she said, and depends on firms getting their processes right first.
NIBA's latest research, its Technology to Trust report, based on an August 2026 survey of brokers and brokerage leaders, found 91% of brokerages have engaged with AI but only about one in four have embedded it in core operations. Of brokers using AI, 58% save at least an hour a week, and the most common use of that time is client advice and relationships, Insurance Business reported.
The same survey found only about a third of brokerages using AI have a formal AI policy. More than one in five have no AI-specific safeguards, and more than a third can't say who in the business is responsible for AI. Accuracy and reliability (49%) and data privacy (43%) were the most cited barriers to going further.
APRA has warned it will run targeted operational and technology risk reviews of general insurers in 2026-27, and new Privacy Act requirements taking effect in December 2026 will require organisations to disclose certain decisions made by computer programs, including AI.
Matos made the same point about his own sector, telling the committee that no bank should build AI without the right controls.
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Matos' advice assumes workers can get the skills he describes. Many are teaching themselves: Hays' FY26/27 Salary Guide survey of more than 6,500 professionals found 78% of Australians using AI at work had no formal training.
Shanks has said the strongest leaders treat skill development as "a strategic asset underpinning long-term resilience" rather than a support function, in comments for IB's Hot List 2026. ANZIIF has also launched a Business School aimed at mid-career professionals, after finding plenty of foundation education but "not so much for those that have been in the sector for 10 years plus", as she put it.
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Being ready for 2030 starts with being "open to change", Shanks said, and with treating lifelong learning as part of the job.
