American Express is cutting 5% of its workforce to ‘prepare for AI’

American Express is cutting thousands of employees as the leading credit card company prepares for artificial intelligence to take over more of its internal processes.

Amex is eliminating 5% of its global workforce and taking a $336 million restructuring charge, CEO Stephen Squeri told analysts Friday on the company’s third-quarter earnings call. The firm had almost 77,000 employees at the end of 2025.

Chief Financial Officer Christophe Le Caillec told CNBC in an interview that the restructuring was to make American Express “leaner, more agile, and also to prepare for AI.”

“You don’t want to automate processes that are not optimally structured,” Le Caillec said. “So what we’re doing here is to reduce layers and increase spans of controls, so that we can automate and take advantage of AI in the coming quarters and the coming years.”

The Amex announcement reflects a broader trend across financial services, where banks are working to replace repetitive roles with AI automation. On Thursday, Barclays confirmed plans to trim 5,000 jobs — also roughly 5% of its staff — in another tech-driven cost initiative. The moves come even as the sector is enjoying robust profits from growing consumer spending and resilient credit.

During the analyst call, Squeri said that the charge was to improve the company’s efficiency.

“We’ve got good momentum, but to accelerate innovation and win over the next few years, we needed to become [a] more agile and efficient organization,” Squeri said.

While the CEO emphasized the need to meet customers’ desires to use AI, including agents, he added that Amex is “not going to let assistants run rogue through our system.”

“We need to protect our customers [and] merchants, and we’re only going to allow agents to access our systems that are either approved through API or MCP channels,” he said, citing two ways to securely connect outside platforms with Amex systems.

Amex posted quarterly results that topped Wall Street profit expectations. Adjusted earnings per share were $4.68, topping the $4.48 average estimate of analysts, according to LSEG.

The company raised its full-year earnings guidance to a range of $18.30 to $18.60 per share, on an unadjusted basis, up from its previous target of $17.30 to $17.90.

That metric was helped by proceeds from Amex’s sale of its stake in Global Business Travel Group, part of which went into the restructuring plan, Le Caillec said.

Total revenue rose 9% to $20.06 billion, also coming in slightly below Wall Street’s $20.12 billion LSEG forecast. Executives attributed part of the spending drag to recent exits from small business co-brand partnerships.

Shares of the card company fell roughly 3% in morning trading.