Barclays appoints Anita Tanna as its first chief AI officer

Barclays has appointed Anita Tanna as its first chief AI officer, tasking the banking group's former chief of staff to the CEO with accelerating artificial intelligence (AI) adoption across the organisation.

Tanna took up the role last week after nearly three years as Group Chief of Staff to Barclays CEO, where she worked across strategic, financial and organisational priorities, including AI, automation, simplification and standardisation.

In a LinkedIn post announcing her appointment, Tanna said she would focus on accelerating AI adoption across the group and identifying opportunities to generate value for customers, employees and businesses.

“AI has enormous potential to transform how we serve our customers and clients and is a critical enabler of our strategy,” she said. “I’ll be focused on accelerating adoption across the group and focussing on where we can unlock the greatest value, while ensuring we continue to use AI thoughtfully and responsibly.”

The appointment comes as financial services firms look to move beyond developing AI capabilities towards embedding the technology into everyday operations and business decision-making.

Barclays already has an established technology infrastructure, with a group chief information officer overseeing AI strategy, about 89% of its applications running in the cloud, and more than 250 AI tools and models in use, according to information accompanying the appointment.

The challenge now is to translate these capabilities into wider adoption across the workforce. This involves aligning business divisions, allocating resources, establishing accountability and integrating AI into existing processes.

An IBM CEO study cited in commentary on the appointment found that 83% of CEOs believed AI success depended more on adoption than on the technology itself. The executives estimated that only about a quarter of their workforce used AI regularly, highlighting the gap between investment in AI and its practical application.

Tanna's experience as chief of staff could be relevant to this transition, given the role's exposure to organisation-wide priorities, governance and execution across business functions.

Tanna has 22 years of experience in financial services, spanning senior leadership roles in equity sales, financial markets and investment banking.

Before becoming Group Chief of Staff in January 2024, she served as managing director and head of equity sales, high-touch and programme trading execution services at Barclays Corporate & Investment Bank. She previously held leadership positions in equity sales across the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region.

Earlier in her career, Tanna spent nearly 12 years at Citi, where she held several senior roles, including head of equity sales in the UK, head of international sales and head of global sales. She began her career at Bear Stearns in equity research and sales before joining Goldman Sachs as an associate in European equity sales to hedge funds.

She holds a Bachelor of Science degree in economics, with a specialisation in econometrics, from the University of Manchester.

Barclays' appointment reflects a broader question facing banks as they determine how to govern and scale AI: whether responsibility should sit primarily with technology leaders or executives with experience in business operations and organisational transformation.

For Tanna, the immediate priority is to turn existing AI capabilities into measurable business outcomes while ensuring the technology is deployed responsibly across the group.