Why banks are giving tellers raises, instead of firing them all

A woman touches a robot at the 2018 World Robot Conference in Beijing on August 15, 2018. (Photo by WANG Zhao / AFP)

Bank branches still have greeters, coffee and sometimes fresh-baked cookies. At HSBC, there’s also Pepper, the finance robot. About four feet tall, Pepper is shiny white with a lemon-shaped head, large eyes that light up blue, and a tablet attached to its chest. 

Pepper might seem like HSBC Holdings Plc’s vision for a not-so-distant future without tellers, but that’s not so, according to Pablo Sanchez, the firm’s head of US retail banking and wealth management. The robot’s job is to lure pedestrians into HSBC’s flagship on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue, then pose for selfies, field basic questions and direct customers who need real help to the right human.