Macquarie says AI will make junior analysts senior faster

Felix Laurent 2 Nov 2026 3 min read

Big tech

Junior research staff at Macquarie Capital should not worry too much about AI taking their jobs. That is the view of Christina Lee, who heads research and sales in Asia at the advisory and investing arm of Macquarie Group. She told Bloomberg on November 2, 2026 that AI tools may help entry-level analysts learn faster. In her view, the same tools could shorten the road to senior roles.

The comment lands in a tense year for junior finance jobs. Banks keep adding AI to research and deal work. The first tasks it takes over are the ones juniors were hired to do. So the question of whether AI will replace junior analysts is no longer abstract.

What Macquarie's Christina Lee said

Lee's argument flips the usual fear. The standard story says AI removes the routine work that entry-level analysts exist for. Lee says AI tools may instead speed up the learning curve itself.

If that holds, a junior analyst spends fewer years on basic tasks before taking on senior work. The tools do not replace the junior. They change how fast the junior grows.

Bloomberg ran the interview as an exclusive. The full text sits behind a paywall. The public part carries her main claim, without figures on hiring or headcount at Macquarie.

Her claim can be checked against hiring data for banks. That data partly agrees with her.

Junior analysts already reach senior roles faster

Revelio Labs, a workforce data company, published a study of US banks on October 13, 2026. It tracked how long people spend in junior roles before their first senior job. Since ChatGPT launched in November 2022, that time has shrunk for every group it measured.

The table shows the change in time spent at junior level before the first senior role, since November 2022.

Role	Change in time to first senior role
Financial analyst	-11.3%
Tech	-8.1%
Rest of the economy, all roles	about -6%
Sales	-3.5%
Compliance	-1.5%

Financial analysts move up faster than any other group in the study. Their speed-up is almost twice the average for the rest of the economy.

So the shift Lee describes is already visible in the numbers. Revelio reads it with more caution. The authors write that faster juniors "have less time to build the experience senior bankers rely on."

A faster ladder also matters less if fewer people get onto it.

Fewer junior analysts get onto the ladder

That is the other half of the Revelio data. Junior roles in US banks are now 4.7% below their October 2022 level. Senior headcount kept growing at about its pre-ChatGPT pace.

Junior hiring fell from about 10.5% of junior headcount a year before ChatGPT to around 8.5% in 2024 and 2025. It recovered in 2026, though the study gives no exact rate. The drop does not come from juniors quitting: attrition rose briefly in 2023, then returned to its usual range.

Junior jobs are also the most exposed to AI. In Q1 2026, 49% of junior bank job postings were AI-exposed. The share was 43% for senior bank postings and 35% in the rest of the economy.

Still, Revelio does not blame generative AI alone for the drop in junior bankers. The authors see it as a continuation of the long-running shift to digital banking. Banks, in their words, "seem to be restructuring around AI rather than being automated by it."

That leaves Lee's promise with one open condition.

Will AI make better senior analysts or just faster ones

Lee is right about the direction. Financial analysts already climb 11.3% faster than before ChatGPT. The catch is the number of seats: junior roles are 4.7% below 2022, and hiring only began to recover this year.

So AI is fast-tracking promotion for the juniors who get in, not opening more doors for new ones. Whether faster also means ready depends on what the tools teach. If AI speeds up learning, Lee's bet holds. If it only skips the work, banks will promote people with less of the experience Revelio says senior bankers rely on.