Top 5 Jobs in Financial Services That Are Most at Risk from AI in Ireland - And How to Adapt

Ireland's financial services sector - directly employing nearly 60,000 people - is at the sharp end of a national AI shift, with TASC estimating roughly 63% of Irish jobs exposed to AI disruption and worker surveys reporting deep anxiety about displacement and surveillance; the challenge is real in both city hubs like Dublin and Cork and in graduate pipelines where firms are already trimming entry-level hiring as routine tasks are automated.

At the same time PwC's AI Jobs Barometer shows AI-exposed roles in Ireland have grown 94% since 2019 and stresses that skills are changing faster than ever, so the task for workers and employers is to pivot from fear to practical reskilling.

Short, work-focused programmes that teach prompt-writing and everyday AI tools can help bridge the gap - so people manage AI rather than be managed by it - and companies that pair technology with training are most likely to keep jobs meaningful and growing (TASC report on accounting for workers and AI, PwC Ireland AI Jobs Barometer report).

“AI amplifies expertise. It doesn't replace your ability to think; it makes you a better thinker.” - Ger McDonough, PwC Ireland

To pinpoint the five financial services roles in Ireland most exposed to AI, the analysis leaned on PwC's large-scale approach: close to a billion job ads plus thousands of company financial reports were reviewed to map where AI is already showing up in hiring, wages and skills demand; occupations were labelled “AI‑exposed” then split into augmentable (AI supports judgement) and automatable (AI can carry out many tasks), and AI exposure was used as a practical proxy for likely uptake.

The methodology tracked changes in job postings and demanded skills over time (Ireland's AI‑exposed occupations rose ~94% since 2019 and the top quartile saw 2.78x more skill churn), measured wage effects for AI‑skill roles (a reported 56% premium) and checked sector patterns (information & communication job ads in Ireland hit 13.9% AI‑skill postings).

That combination of near‑real‑time job‑ad telemetry and financial data, plus the concept of agentic AI as a new class of autonomous assistants, lets the study flag routine, repeatable roles in finance that are most likely to be reshaped - and points to the precise skills employers will demand next.

Read the full methodology in PwC's Ireland analysis via the PwC Ireland AI Jobs Barometer and the PwC Ireland AI Jobs Barometer press release at PwC Ireland AI Jobs Barometer press release.

“The future of work isn't about doing less with fewer people – it's about doing more, better, together.” - David Lee, Chief Technology Officer, PwC Ireland

Accounts payable, accounts receivable and payroll clerks are on the front line of AI disruption because so much of their daily work - invoice data capture, three‑way matching, approvals and routine payroll runs - is precisely what automation does best; as Tradeshift report on AI impact on accounts payable automation notes, the current manual process can cost about $10 and take eleven days per invoice, yet AI‑enabled platforms can slash processing time to under three days and drive large parts of B2B invoice flows to run without human intervention.

That doesn't mean mass redundancy: vendors like Stampli analysis of accounts payable automation and job impacts and Square 9 argue automation removes the drudgery while creating room for strategic tasks - exception handling, vendor relationship management, cash forecasting and fraud defence - so AP teams scale without simply adding heads.

Irish finance centres should treat automation as a redeployment engine: expect fewer purely entry‑level data‑entry roles but more demand for people who can validate models, negotiate with suppliers and turn cleansed payables data into board‑ready insight, a shift many AP professionals now see as a career lifeline rather than a threat.

“AP aren't just the people that are paying the bills anymore. They're regulatory experts. They're cash managers. They're being asked to do more big data analytics, and they're often the last line of defense against fraud.” - Jess Scheer, Tradeshift

Junior auditors and first‑pass engagement roles are squarely in the crosshairs of today's audit automation wave: tools that capture evidence, stitch a clear audit trail and draft workpapers are already turning manual vouching into a review task rather than a drafting task, leaving the routine “tick‑and‑tie” work that historically trained new hires much less common (DataSnipper: How audit automation is changing auditing).

KPMG's recent case study shows what that looks like in practice - AI platforms that run whole‑ledger analysis (replacing the traditional 5–10% sampling), flag journal‑entry anomalies, and generate initial narratives for seniors to edit, cutting hours spent on vouching and documentation by roughly a third and surfacing risks that sampling would miss (KPMG case study: AI-enhanced audit examples and whole-ledger analysis).

For Ireland's audit centres this means fewer entry‑level paper‑pushing roles but stronger demand for people who can interrogate model outputs, investigate exceptions, defend evidence to regulators, and translate AI signals into audit judgement - skills that turn the threat of automation into a career advantage rather than a dead end.

The memorable shift is simple: what used to take weeks of sample testing can now reveal issues across 100% of transactions in minutes, and that changes what employers will hire for next.

Tax preparers and routine compliance officers in Ireland are facing a rapid shift: AI and automation are already taking over the repetitive work - data capture, document validation, filing orchestration and deadline tracking - so the role is moving from data‑entry to oversight, exception handling and client advisory.

Practical tools - from OCR and AutoVerification to generative summaries and agentic task managers - can shave hours off weekly workloads and cut error rates, while integrated client portals and real‑time compliance checks boost completion rates and client satisfaction (Thomson Reuters: Exploring the Future of Tax Automation, Wolters Kluwer: Elevating the Tax Profession with Automation).

Vendors built for tax workflows report dramatic operational gains - some firms have cut review cycles by 30–50%, reduced seven‑day bottlenecks to overnight turnaround, and can process multiples more returns without adding staff - so Irish practices that invest in secure, auditable automation plus upskilling can redeploy people into higher‑value planning and compliance roles rather than losing ground to tech‑led rivals (Filed: New AI tax system integrates with existing workflows).

The memorable truth: the towering pile of tax season paperwork is now a solvable overnight problem, not a rite of passage.

“Tax firms are drowning in paperwork while their talent walks out the door.” - Leroy Kerry, Co‑founder and CEO of Filed

Credit control, loan processing and middle‑office teams in Ireland are prime targets for automation because the work is precisely the kind of rules‑based, document‑heavy flow that AI and agentic systems excel at: e‑KYC, AML checks, OCR data capture, credit scoring and decision engines can now run in real time, turning days of manual review into minutes and enabling high straight‑through processing rates reported in early adopters; see FlowForma's automated loan underwriting guide for how credit decisions, income verification and compliance checks are stitched into one workflow, and DeepOpinion's consumer loan processing automation case studies show touchless processing and measurable back‑office time savings that Irish lenders could emulate.

That opportunity comes with a regulatory caveat: the EU's AI Act singles out credit scoring as likely high‑risk, so Irish banks and fintechs should pair automation with robust data governance and human‑in‑the‑loop controls to keep decisions explainable and defensible; see EU AI Act implications for credit underwriting.

The practical takeaway for workers and managers: routine checks will shrink, roles will shift toward exception handling, model oversight and KYC escalation, and the pile of paper that once defined middle‑office nights can be reduced to auditable logs and exception queues - if institutions invest in both tech and reskilling now.

“We gained a lot of time in our back office, 80% of our staff was able to reallocate their time.” - François Goffinet, CEO, CED Europe

Customer service roles in Ireland's financial centres are being reshaped, not erased: AI chatbots and voice agents are already delivering 24/7, multilingual first‑line help and smart agent assists that deflect routine payment-status checks and rote queries so humans can focus on high‑stakes judgement, compliance and relationship repair; Devoteam's analysis highlights rapid adoption (Gartner expects ~80% of service teams to use generative AI by 2025) and real wins - its “Helena” chatbot handled half of interactions and lifted NPS dramatically - while practical guides show how to combine personalised, omnichannel bots with live escalation and governance to protect trust in regulated sectors (Devoteam analysis of AI impact on customer service).

At the same time, career advice for support staff stresses that AI replaces tasks, not the need for human empathy: Irish banks and fintechs should pair automation with prompt upskilling - conversation design, escalation rules and model oversight - to keep multilingual teams relevant and ready to manage exceptions and audit trails (Paybump guide on coexisting with AI in customer service).

A small but memorable fact: proven nudges and “priority queue” promises can unlock public acceptance, turning a balky chatbot rollout into a trusted after‑hours service layer rather than a brand risk.

“Chatbots are essentially free once you have them up and running. They can handle an almost limitless number of customers.” - Evgeny Kagan, Johns Hopkins Carey Business School

The way forward for Ireland is a three‑tier action plan that turns risk into runway: for workers - treat reskilling as career insurance by prioritising practical AI skills (prompt writing, tool workflows and model oversight) that command the 56% wage premium PwC identifies and that helped AI‑exposed roles in Ireland nearly double since 2019 (PwC Ireland AI Jobs Barometer (PwC report)); for employers - use AI as a growth strategy not just a cost cutter by funding rapid on‑the‑job training, redesigning roles around exception handling and judgement, and embedding strong governance to build trust as PwC recommends; for policymakers - back accessible, bite‑size programmes, co‑fund public–private reskilling pipelines and align regulation with skills investment so AI creates new, higher‑value roles rather than simply displacing routine work.

The practical payoff is real: with the right mix of training, governance and incentives, Irish firms can capture productivity gains while workers move from data‑entry tasks into oversight, analysis and client advisory - skills that are in rising demand.

For anyone ready to act now, short, employer‑aligned courses such as the AI Essentials for Work bootcamp offer hands‑on prompt and tool training to accelerate that transition (AI Essentials for Work syllabus (Nucamp), Register for AI Essentials for Work (Nucamp)).

“AI amplifies expertise. It doesn't replace your ability to think; it makes you a better thinker.” - Ger McDonough, PwC Ireland