“Through the year, you would expect us to be coming down on headcount.”

In context

“ets which you had spoken about a few years ago. Post the consent order, headcount increased from about 200,000 to 240,000; you had indicated that you would look to drive that closer to 220,000 or so employees. You are two-thirds of the way there. We are in a very different environment where AI-driven efficiency gains are much more tangible than they were a few years ago. Could you speak to your approach or philosophy to headcount management and resourcing in light of this new AI regime? Gonzalo Luchetti: Thank you. First, you saw this quarter a severance of about $500 million. That will enable us to take earlier actions in the year to contribute to our productivity and efficiency journey. On headcount, you can see it coming down quarter-on-quarter from about 226,000 down to about 224,000. Through the year, you would expect us to be coming down on headcount. As I said earlier, not only do we expect to drive expense discipline day-to-day, but in addition we are focused on structural efficiencies over time—benefiting from the investments we have already made in our transformation, where we modernized platforms; and continuing to drive automation with technology, as well as leveraging AI to further turbocharge self-funded investments. Operator: Our next question comes from Erika Najarian with UBS. Please go ahead. Erika Najarian: Hi, thank you. Just one follow-up for me because I appreciate that we are going to have quite a day in a few weeks. Jane, you talked about your stress capital buffer not reflecting your true risk profile. Obviously, we are not going to hear more on that until next year. You have also talked about Basel III endgame refor”