Multinational financial services company American Express plans to lay off 3,500 employees worldwide as it prepares to expand the use of artificial intelligence to take on more roles.

The company’s chief financial officer Christophe Le Caillec confirmed the plan in an interview with CNBC, stating that the restructuring would make American Express more efficient.

“You don’t want to automate processes that are not optimally structured. 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,” Mr Le Caillec.

The mass layoffs of 3,500 workers would represent a five per cent reduction in American Express’s global workforce, which had about 77,000 employees at the end of 2025.

On the company’s third-quarter earnings call on Friday, American Express CEO Stephen Squeri said the decision was necessary to accelerate innovation and make the company more agile.

“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 organisation,” Mr Squeri said.

He also assured that introducing AI would not put customers’ financial security at risk, stating, “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.”