Anne Marie Darling had the kind of 25-year career at Goldman Sachs that young associates dream of: A partner for a dozen years, she watched markets transform electronically while holding down titles like head of global multi-asset platform sales, head of global FICC execution services and COO of global securities client strategy.
When she felt she was done at Goldman last year, she didn't retire or take on a slew of director positions, but instead decided to join Barclays, where she's now responsible for half of the bank's 120,000 employees. Appointed group co-chief operating officer and co-CEO of Barclays execution services in July 2025, Darling said she was brought in to drive change at the U.K. investment bank.
A big part of that is AI based. By the end of last year, 89% of Barclays applications ran on cloud platforms, up from 75% in 2023; about 70% of core enterprise data had been standardized across the company's platforms, according to Barclays. It had also introduced more than 250 AI-enabled tools and models across the bank.
Still, Barclays is taking its AI adoption slowly and ensuring it meets the bank's risk tolerance, Darling said.
"We're not using the most expensive model, like a Ferrari, to go around the block," Darling said. "Since I've been here in the past six to nine months, I've seen a J curve in what's happening around agentic AI, tech enablement more broadly, and I felt it was a real opportunity to leapfrog some of our competitors."
Several key metrics at the bank improved last year. Profit before tax rose 12% to GBP $9.1 billion from GBP $8.1 billion in 2024, while statutory return on tangible equity climbed to 11.3% from 10.5%, the bank said. Barclays execution services also cut costs to the tune of GBP $700 million in gross cost efficiency savings. Shareholder distributions rose last year to GBP $3.7 billion.
Darling started her career at Goldman as an electronic trader on the equities desk for six years, which she noted was a huge transformation from the days of screaming and hand waving in pits to buy and sell stocks. The rise of AI and digital assets could now "potentially" be even "much more significant," she said.
"I don't know what the future is going to hold, but we're getting a lot closer to the intelligence framework," Darling said. "How do we think about coexisting between everything we're doing on the technology fronts and how humans can really drive and impact that?"The answer to that question appears to be another reason she decided to join Barclays. "To be a part of that at a complex, well-revered bank was really interesting," she said.
