Technology seen doing more bank work

New technologies are poised to sweep through investment banks, relieving many rank-and-file employees of roughly a third of their current workload, according to McKinsey & Co. The shift, already stoking angst on Wall Street, may take only a few years.

Cognitive technologies — applications or machines that perform tasks once requiring human thought — are now cheap enough that banks can deploy them across operations facilitating trades or other capital-markets business. In a report Thursday, McKinsey said automating tasks will “free up capacity” for staff to focus on higher-value work, such as research, generating new ideas or tending to clients.

“This is really starting to take steam and it’s going to transform the industry over the next two to three years,” Jared Moon, a McKinsey partner who co-wrote the report, said in an interview. The consultants estimate cognitive technologies will free 20 to 30 percent of employees’ capacity in units processing trades.