COOKED
The core of this job — collecting applicant information, keying it into the core banking system, running ID and credit checks, explaining rate sheets and fee schedules, and generating signature cards — is exactly what online and mobile account-opening flows already do without a human. What remains is the in-branch moment: physically inspecting a driver's license, notarizing, reassuring an anxious older customer, and untangling the cases where the automated flow rejected someone. Branch consolidation compounds the software pressure, so headcount falls even where the tasks technically survive.
Part 2020 shock, part continued decline in the years since.
Median pay $36,550 → $47,670 +4.3% in real terms
This line is counted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics — the one figure on this page that isn't a judgement of ours. Headcount moves on demand, offshoring, demographics and the business cycle, and automation is one term among several, often not the loudest.
So a falling line is not evidence that AI did it, and a rising one is not evidence that it won't. Both happen in this register: some occupations resist automation and shrink anyway, others are highly automatable and keep growing. The marked year is 2020.
BLS projection, 2024–2034
-13.2% 38,900 → 33,800 on the projections basis
Exposed, and shrinking
Both signals point the same way: the tasks are largely automatable and the BLS projects -13.2% by 2034. This is the case where the score and the forecast agree, and it is the one worth taking seriously.
Different clocks. The score is what current AI could do to this work today. The projection is how many of these jobs will exist in 2034. Everything between the two — how fast employers actually adopt, whether demand grows in the meantime — is why they can point opposite ways without either being wrong.
~2,300 openings a year on average, including replacing people who leave.
Admit ClerkRetail BankerPersonal BankerUniversal BankerNew Accounts ClerkBank RepresentativeRelationship BankerBanking Services ClerkRetail Personal BankerBilingual Personal BankerBranch Service SpecialistPersonal Banker AssociateFinancial Services OfficerCustomer Service SpecialistNew Accounts RepresentativeMember Service RepresentativeSafe Deposit Box Rental ClerkBanking Services RepresentativeRelationship Banking SpecialistFinancial Service RepresentativeBilingual Spanish Personal BankerNew Client Banking Services ClerkNew Accounts Banking Representative
Holding it up: trust premium . Weakest point: liability shield .
Core tasks are already automatable Opening a checking account, ordering debit cards, setting up direct deposit, and keying CIP data into Fiserv or Jack Henry are already end-to-end digital products at every major bank — the 4 rather than a 9 reflects that even the exception work (a rejected ChexSystems hit, a trust account signature card) is increasingly routed to a centralized ops team rather than the branch desk.
Fully desk- and screen-based The only physical acts are handling a driver's license or passport under a UV lamp, running a signature card through a scanner, and pointing at a safe deposit box — all inside a climate-controlled branch at a seated workstation, which is why this sits at 4 and not in the 5-12 band with tellers who handle cash drawers and vaults.
No licence, no signature requirement No state licence gates this work; a notary commission is common but notarizing costs $50 and protects the acknowledgment, not the account decision — BSA/CIP and Reg CC compliance liability lands on the bank and its BSA officer, and the 3 rather than 0 is only that notary appointment.
Executes defined procedures on defined inputs Decisions here run off written scripts: CIP documentary requirements, the ChexSystems decline matrix, and the officer-approval threshold for waiving a fee or overriding a hold — the 4 rather than 8 reflects that anything genuinely ambiguous, like a suspicious-activity concern or a nonresident alien account, escalates to a branch manager or BSA officer by policy.
The verdict above describes this occupation as a whole. Almost nobody does the typical version of a job — tick what's actually in your week and see how your own mix sits.
Your task mix speaks to task resistance (4/20 here) — how much of the day's work current AI already does. That is the dimension the boxes above are about.
It cannot move the other three. Liability shield (3/20) is whether the law requires a licensed human to sign. Trust premium (7/20) is whether buyers specifically pay for a person. Judgment and accountability (4/20) is whether the role exists to own consequential calls. Those are facts about the occupation's standing, not about which tasks are in your week — a paralegal who does only trial exhibits still holds no licence. Together they are 14 of this occupation's 22 points (64%).
Embodiment (4/20) is also a property of the work rather than the worker, but we don't tag individual tasks as physical or not, so the picker can't tell you anything about it. That's a limit of this tool, not a claim.
Did we get the list right? Tell us what's missing — the tasks are written from the outside, and you're reading this from the inside.
Loan Officers EXPOSED
Credit Counselors EXPOSED
Insurance Sales Agents EXPOSED
The moves above are yours to make. This is the other half: what would have to change in the world for the occupation itself to score higher. None of it is in any one person's gift, but it is where the floor actually comes from. Scores here are not a one-way ratchet. Only two of the five dimensions — task resistance and embodiment — track what machines can do. The other three track law, what buyers will pay for, and who is answerable, and those move in both directions, often in response to the same pressure AI creates. If every lever below landed, this occupation would score around 37/100 — EXPOSED.
Task-mix shift is real here and already visible: the straightforward openings are gone to app flows, so what reaches a human is the exception tier — CIP mismatches, thin-file and ITIN applicants, fraud-flag overrides, elder-abuse and coercion red flags, trust/estate and small-business entity accounts where beneficial ownership must be untangled. If banks formally designate the branch role as the documented override authority for automated CIP/fraud rejections (a signed exception memo reviewable by examiners), the role owns consequential calls rather than keying data. Watch for adverse-action and fair-lending pressure making 'a human reviewed this rejection' an audit expectation.
Same two-tier mechanism: once routine keying is fully automated, measured residual work is exception handling, entity-account documentation, and suspicious-activity escalation, which current systems handle poorly. This raises the score without raising headcount — branch consolidation cuts the number of these jobs even as each remaining one gets harder.
FinCEN CIP/CDD rules currently let banks verify identity non-documentarily; a rule (or OCC/FDIC exam expectation) requiring documentary in-person verification with a named bank employee attesting to inspection of the physical ID for accounts above a risk threshold — analogous to the beneficial-ownership certification form under 31 CFR 1010.230 — would put a specific human's name on the file. State notary law is the other hinge: states that have NOT adopted remote online notarization (or that restrict RON for account/signature-card execution) keep a commissioned human physically required, and notary commissions carry personal liability and bond.
Narrow route only: CFPB/state pressure on branch closures in underserved areas, plus state 'banking desert' bills and CRA branch-presence credit, sustain demand for an in-person opener for cash-preferring, limited-English, unbanked and elderly customers. This is a subsidized floor, not a premium buyers pay.
The limit. Even with every lever, this stays a low-scoring occupation. Liability and judgment attach to the bank and its BSA officer, not to the clerk, and there is no license or personal exposure to build on. The binding constraint is branch count, not task automation — headcount falls regardless of what happens to the score.
| New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ | 2,940 | $58,980 +24% |
| Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN | 1,270 | $49,950 +5% |
| Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell, GA | 850 | $45,620 -4% |
| Oklahoma City, OK | 730 | $45,550 -4% |
| Detroit-Warren-Dearborn, MI | 720 | $46,780 -2% |
| Las Vegas-Henderson-North Las Vegas, NV | 590 | $47,460 +0% |
| Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX | 550 | $49,850 +5% |
| Omaha, NE-IA | 530 | $48,150 +1% |
| New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ | 2,940 | $58,980 +24% |
| Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV | 160 | $58,410 +23% |
| St. Louis, MO-IL | 380 | $57,090 +20% |
We have no reported case of a named organisation automating this occupation. Not one deployment, not one announcement.
That is worth saying out loud next to a score of 22. The verdict above is about what the work exposes — what current AI could do to these tasks. It is not a claim that anyone has done it. For this occupation those two things have come apart completely: the capability argument is on this page, and the evidence column is empty.
Has AI actually changed your work? One tap, anonymous, and the running tally is public. Nothing else is asked of you.
Rather than check back: get the digest and we'll tell you what changed — or watch a single occupation from its own page.