SINGAPORE – Banks from Sydney to London are vying for the senior role of chief AI officer. Jobs that almost didn’t exist a year ago. But people in the position say that may not last long.
Leaders from HSBC Holdings, Commonwealth Bank of Australia and Lloyds Banking Group have moved into top artificial intelligence roles in the past three months. These jobs can command salaries of nearly US$3.5 million (S$4.5 million) a year and involve skill sets that are relatively hard to find, so companies are often forced to poach bankers from competitors.
The mobility of senior personnel and the scope of their work has led to discussions about their potentially limited shelf life. The idea is that the role of AI director may no longer be necessary in the coming years as bankers become more adept at using agents and AI software in their day-to-day work.
“A chief AI officer should operate on the assumption that there is no future role for him,” said David Hardone, who left Standard Chartered in March after less than a year in the role as global head of AI enablement. “Do we have a chief excel officer? Do we have a chief email officer? No,” he added.
The percentage of organizations with a chief AI officer has increased from 26% in 2025 to 76% in 2026, according to a survey of 2,000 CEOs across 21 industries and 33 countries by the IBM Business Value Institute.
According to LinkedIn data, AI heads are currently ranked as one of the fastest-growing job postings in Singapore, even though demand for specialized technical talent exceeds supply.
Data research firm Equilar said the move shows there are a small number of executives whose median pay packages are around US$1.6 million, with top earners approaching US$3.5 million. Exact salaries are rarely made public.
This rush also reflects deeper concerns within the organization. Banks that struggle to integrate AI risk losing customers, market share, and talent to rivals. Still, the appointment of a chief AI officer does not guarantee success, and the agencies currently scrambling to fill the role often disagree on what the job actually involves.
Chua Pei Yin, LinkedIn’s chief economist for Asia Pacific, said the role serves multiple purposes at once.
“The first person is someone who can actually understand what your company’s AI strategy is,” she said in an interview. Every company’s strategy will be different, and “AI strategies may require decisions about what to do and what not to do,” she said.
Part of that job will be deciding who will be responsible for AI training within the bank, and whether that will be within the human resources department, the digital department or the chief technology officer, Chua said. Broad company-wide rollouts tend to be handled by human resources departments, but more specialized programs may reside elsewhere, he added.
Some executives say the job will eventually be swallowed up within the company. Zhao Peng, chief executive officer of Citadel Securities, said the role of chief AI officer will not be needed in the long run as AI will become part of the technology stack, just like smartphones and personal computers.
“We don’t have a person in charge of mobile devices,” he said at the Global Financial Leaders Investment Summit in Hong Kong in November.
Currently, business schools are selling courses along this title. These include the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, which offers a Chief AI Officer program that costs about $28,000 for a 10-month course. Duke University, Cornell University, and the University of Michigan have also introduced similar services for mid-career professionals looking to advance their skills.
“The growth rate for this role is extraordinary,” said Matt Cohn, senior director of strategic innovation for the University of Chicago Program. “Many of our students are founders, CEOs, and chief strategy officers, and they’re saying, ‘I need the skills of a chief AI officer.'”
Ranil Boteju, an industry veteran who left Lloyds to become the first chief AI officer at Australia’s largest financial institution, the Commonwealth Bank, predicts that, like electricity, AI will become “invisible” and integrated into every aspect of banking operations within about 10 years. bloomberg
