𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

Barclays has unveiled plans to accelerate its use of artificial intelligence (AI) following a cost-cutting drive, as the boss of the bank was handed a £15 million pay package.

The banking group set out new targets after revealing that its annual profit jumped by 13% last year.

Chief executive CS Venkatakrishnan, known within the bank as Venkat, said AI was a core part of Barclays’ plans to make the bank more efficient.

“To me, the promise of AI is not just efficiency… it’s not just an end in itself,” he said.

“What it does is it makes some of the more routine aspects of people’s jobs easier to accomplish, and frees them up to do much more in their internal time faster, better and in a more streamlined way.

“It is early days and how we realise that we will have to work our way through, but that is the objective.”

The new focus comes after Barclays said it made cost savings worth £700 million during 2025, bringing the total to £1.7 billion over two years.

It is targeting savings of around £2 billion between 2026 and 2028.

Meanwhile, Venkat was awarded a pay package worth more than £15 million for the year, incorporating fixed pay and bonus awards.

This increased from the £11.6 million he took home in 2024.

Barclays also revealed that the bank’s bonus pool increased to £2.2 billion for 2025, up 15% on the previous year.

“This level of incentive funding for 2025 reflects performance across the group, and enables us to reward colleagues for the outcomes they have helped to achieve,” the bank said.

The banking giant generated a pre-tax profit of £9.1 billion for 2025, a 13% increase on the £8.1 billion made in 2024.

Income from all its divisions increased, with total group income jumping by 9% year-on-year.

This soared to 16% for its corporate bank, with firms both depositing more cash and borrowing more, and 11% for the investment bank, as activity in the global financial markets accelerated.

Barclays said it wants to hand out more than £15 billion to shareholders between 2026 and 2028 through dividends and share buybacks.

Nevertheless, total costs for the group increased by 5% last year, partly due to the acquisition of Tesco Bank.

It also reflects the bank setting aside an additional £235 million to cover the estimated cost of compensating motor finance customers under the financial regulator’s proposed redress scheme – bringing the total provision to £325 million.

Barclays said it considers it “more likely than not” that the compensation scheme will be implemented by the Financial Conduct Authority, which is expected to be set out this month or next.