Mizuho to Retrain Thousands of Sales and Clerical Staff as AI Developers

Mizuho Financial Group, one of Japan's three largest banking groups, will start moving sales and clerical employees into artificial intelligence development jobs in November, according to plans disclosed on Oct. 15. The bank and securities group said it will open the switch to all 50,000 employees at its banking and securities subsidiaries, beginning with a few dozen volunteers and expanding the number of AI developers to several thousand over the next ten years.

The move marks a change in how one of the country's most established white collar employers defines a finance career. Banking jobs have long been split among clerical, sales and engineering tracks. Mizuho now intends to blur those lines, arguing that staff who already understand its loan processes and customer service operations can build and maintain the tools that support them.

Three months of training

Employees who transfer will receive three months of dedicated training before taking up development work, the company said. Previously, building a basic foundation in AI took around a year and a half, but the bank said generative coding tools now allow staff without deep technical backgrounds to take part. The program has no age limit and is open to experienced managers as well as younger staff, with volunteers given priority.

Once trained, the employees will develop systems for internal work and customer services. Early projects include tools that automatically draft documents needed for loan screening and client proposals, freeing time for customer interaction. Staff will also build conversational tools that answer questions about asset management advice and guide customers through account opening procedures.

The bank said assigning development work to people who know the day to day business should produce systems better suited to actual operations. It also expects its existing engineering staff to concentrate on more advanced systems, including security and higher-level builds, as the new AI developers handle practical, business-facing tools. The organization described the approach as a two-track use of its workforce, drawing on internal talent as the cost of hiring AI developers externally climbs.

Workload targets and hiring pressure

Mizuho aims to use AI to cut office workloads equivalent to as many as 5,000 clerical employees over the next ten years, a figure that will reshape how jobs are staffed and how roles are defined. The company did not detail how reductions would be achieved or whether they would involve departures.

A shortage of AI talent underpins the strategy. According to the human resources services firm LevaTech, the ratio of open AI positions to job seekers in Japan stood above 10 to one at the end of 2025, meaning employers cannot fill AI roles through external hiring alone. Training existing staff, who already know the institution's processes, is intended to close part of that gap.

The initiative fits a broader push across Japanese finance. Risona Bank has introduced an AI system that automates loan approval paperwork, cutting a task that once took two days to as little as 40 minutes. Mitsui Sumitomo Bank aims to reduce work in corporate sales by 1.4 million hours by 2028 through automated proposal writing, and Mitsubishi UFJ Bank is widening loan screening automation with AI startups. Workers across banking, securities and asset management are being pushed toward roles that combine product knowledge with analytics and AI developers skills, shifting career paths away from routine processing and toward oversight, model review and control design.

What to watch next

The first transfers begin in November, and the bank's progress in moving several thousand employees over the decade will be closely watched across corporate Japan. JR East plans to shift about 5,000 staff, roughly 10 percent of its workforce, into AI and other digital development, while Mitsui Fudosan Holdings has also started similar conversions. How quickly Mizuho redefines job descriptions, and whether other banks with large branch networks follow, will determine how far the change spreads.