DBS contract jobs are being slayed by AI, but Hong Kong contractors are booming
If you work as a tech contractor for a bank, you might be worried. Bloomberg reported last week that Singaporean bank DBS intends to cut 4,000 of its contract and temporary staff over the next three years. Is your job at risk? Well, it depends on a few things.
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For one, it depends on your location. DBS’ contractors seem to mainly in Singapore itself, based on the contract jobs it currently has advertised. Italian bank Intesa Sanpaolo, which is also in the process of 9,000 cuts (as of last year) due to AI, is mostly cutting in Italy (7,000 of 9,000 roles). Singaporeans are expensive to employ, as are Italians.
There was a bad smell in the water even before DBS tainted it. Singaporean contractor pay slightly declined YoY (by around 2%) between 2024 and 2025 says Jon Loh, managing director of APAC for tech-specialist recruitment agency Nicoll Curtin. In contrast to Singapore, Loh notes “an increase in rates in Hong Kong, particularly within financial services, insurance, and trading.”
Job risk also depends on what exactly you do as a contractor. Bloomberg’s article noted that up to 200,000 jobs were at risk within the next five years as AI continued to encroach on traditionally human functions – but even though much has been said about tech streamlining roles and reducing headcount, it’s having an additional impact, according to Loh: consolidating skillsets.
“Traditional boundaries between roles are blurring,” Loh says. “Cloud engineers are handling backend tasks, backend developers are incorporating cloud and DevOps responsibilities, and data engineers are increasingly taking on backend work. The industry is converging toward a more unified skill set.”
You might also have imagined that AI and machine learning (ML) roles were safest. You’d be mostly right, but not entirely: Loh points out that, in Asia, while AI and ML contractor demand increased by 70 to 80%, this was closely followed by demand for cybersecurity analysts (demand increased by 60 to 70%) and DevOps engineers (demand increased by 50 to 60%).
Nonetheless, heads will roll in the future. On average, chief information and technology officers surveyed by Bloomberg in January expected 3% of their workforce to be cut by 2029 due to AI. Nearly a quarter of respondents, however, expected 5 to 10% of their workforce to be cut in the same timeframe.
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