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Technicians and associate professionals · code 3311

Securities and finance dealers and brokers

Algorithms already make most trades. Clients still want someone to call when markets crash.

AI could take a fair chunk of all five tasks, from logging buy and sell orders and analysing markets to researching clients and arranging loans.

What they actually do (and what else they get called)

Securities and finance dealers and brokers buy and sell securities, stocks, bonds and other financial instruments, and deal on the foreign exchange, on spot, or on futures markets, on behalf of their own company or for customers on a commission basis. They recommend transactions to clients or senior management. Tasks include - (a) obtaining information about the financial circumstances of customers and companies in which investments may be made; (b) analysing market trends for securities, bonds, stocks and other financial instruments, including foreign exchange; (c) informing prospective customers about market conditions and prospects; (d) advising on and participating in the negotiation of terms for, and organization of, loans and placement of stocks and bonds in the financial market to raise capital for customers; (e) recording and transmitting buy and sell orders for securities, stocks, bonds or other financial instruments and for foreign exchange for future or immediate delivery. Examples of the occupations classified here: - Foreign exchange broker - Foreign exchange dealer - Securities broker - Stocks and shares broker Some related occupations classified elsewhere: - Bond analyst - 2413 - Commodities broker - 3324 - Commodity futures dealer - 3324 - Securities clerk - 4312

  • financial trader
  • asset manager
  • financial broker

Job titles from the EU's ESCO list. Search for any of them on the jobs page and you'll end up here.

37 / 100

Highly exposed to AI

AI could do much of the everyday work. The job doesn’t disappear, but in five years you might not recognise it.

Not the odds you keep your job. It's how much of the everyday work still needs a person, out of 100.

← Robot's turf Human's turf →

The ILO's official verdict: Exposed: Gradient 4

423 of 427 for holding up against AI

Why this score?

The ILO rated each of this job's 5 tasks for how much of it AI could do. They average 63.1 out of 100, so it holds up at 100 − 63.1 = 36.9.

That's the whole sum. No black box, no secret sauce: you can check it against the ILO's study. ILO group “Exposed: Gradient 4”: The ILO’s highest group: nearly every task is affected.

This job rates 23.7 out of 100 for how hands-on it is. The score above only looks at AI tools, not robots, but for work this far from the physical that matters less.

from the source Working Paper 140, Generative AI and Jobs 2025 index data 0.8-observed-use

Man v Bot · compare

Who holds up better?

Securities and finance dealers and brokers 37

v

Go on, try your partner's job. Or your sibling's. We won't tell.

Man v Bot

Where the bot helps, and where the human wins

Bot

What AI takes

The routine stuff. You may not miss it.

  • Placing and recording orders.
  • Market analysis.
  • Client updates.

Man

What people still do better

Judgement, trust and skilled hands. Hard to download.

  • Negotiating big deals.
  • Client relationships.
  • Judgement in a crisis.

Both

What's arriving

New work that only exists because the AI does.

  • Algorithmic and AI trading.
  • Tokenised assets.
  • Market regulation of AI.

Written by a human, from the ILO's task ratings below. Yes, we see the irony. Read it as one person's take.

Meet your two rivals

They're not the same machine. AI software can only reach the parts of a job done on a screen or in words. A chatbot can't climb a ladder. A robot might, one day, if it doesn't fall off.

The AI

Lives in a screen. Never had to fix a boiler.

Threat level: Medium

58 could do without you

It could take over some of the work, and help with more. It could help with 76 of 100.

The robot

The wildcard. Has hands, still working out stairs.

How much it matters here: Lower

24 how hands-on

Not much of this job needs hands, so the robot can sit this one out.

So could a robot do the physical part?

Less than half of this job is hands-on. Robots still matter, but for a smaller part of the work, so we don't sort it any further.

Robots hate fiddly work in awkward spaces. On that measure, this job scores 11 out of 100. The higher it is, the longer the robot waits.

24 How
hands-on
11 How fiddly
and cramped

Kind of hands-on work Less than half hands-on

The small print

They aren't a robot score, and nothing on this page is. Nobody measures how far robots have got well enough to put a number on it. These are the closest thing we have: how hands-on the job is, and how much fiddly, cramped work it takes, which is what Frey and Osborne found hardest for machines.

From O*NET, averaged across 2 US jobs .

finger skill 16.1 · hand skill 6.2 · cramped spaces 10.8 · averaged · rule: hands-on under 50

estimated O*NET 31.0 BLS occupational crosswalk chain ISCO-08 to 2010 SOC (Aug 2012, rev. Jun 2015); 2010 to 2018 SOC (Nov 2017); O*NET-SOC 2019 taxonomy data 0.8-observed-use measures chosen by Frey & Osborne (2017) · the grouping is a sorting, not a measurement

The job, task by task

Every job is really a bundle of tasks. Here's this one unpacked, with how much of each AI could do, out of 100. The score is the average, and averages can hide a lot.

AI's favourite task here scores 66, against an average of 63. The bigger the gap, the more lopsided the job: some of it wide open to AI, some of it barely touched.

  1. 66

    Recording and transmitting buy and sell orders for securities, stocks, bonds or other financial instruments and for foreign exchange for future or immediate delivery.

    Medium
  2. 65

    Analysing market trends for securities, bonds, stocks and other financial instruments, including foreign exchange

    Medium
  3. 65

    Informing prospective customers about market conditions and prospects

    Medium
  4. 63

    Obtaining information about the financial circumstances of customers and companies in which investments may be made

    Medium
  5. 57

    Advising on and participating in the negotiation of terms for, and organization of, loans and placement of stocks and bonds in the financial market to raise capital for customers

    Medium

5 tasks · the High to Very Low labels are the ILO's

from the source Working Paper 140, Generative AI and Jobs 2025 index data 0.8-observed-use

Sidekick or replacement?

A tool that makes you faster is a very different thing from one that does the task while you watch. Jobs and Skills Australia measured the two separately, which is handy.

AI helps you
76
AI does it for you
58

Sidekick wins, by 18 points.

How good a match is this?

2 Australian jobs match this one, and we've simply averaged them. Treat the numbers as a rough guide.

estimated Our Gen AI Transition (Gen AI Capacity Study) September 2025 detailed data release data 0.8-observed-use matched to Australian jobs 2221, 2222

Meanwhile, in real life…

Everything else here is about what AI could do. This is what people actually did. When they asked Claude for help with this kind of work, did they hand the whole task over, or roll their sleeves up and work through it together?

Tiny sample alert This job makes up 0.02% of all the conversations: a tiny slice. People using AI for a job isn't the same as AI being able to do it.

Out of every 100 conversations

57
43

worked through it together handed it over

The small print

Anthropic publishes this about its own product, and it doesn't feed into any score here. These are people who use Claude, not workers in general, so little use here doesn't mean AI can't reach the job.

These two add up to 100. The bars elsewhere on the page don't, because each is scored on its own, so we don't put them side by side.

observed use Anthropic Economic Index release 2026-06-26, period beginning 2026-05-01 data 0.8-observed-use 2026-05-01 · Anthropic, about its own product

So, should traders and brokers be worried?

Short answer: expect big changes. Better to steer them than be steered by them.

Yes, much of this job is exposed. Recording orders, market analysis, informing customers, customer information and negotiating loans and placements are all rated Medium. Algorithmic trading and AI analysis take on routine work; relationships and big deals stay human.

Worth remembering: we score tasks, not jobs. When AI takes on a task, the job usually reshuffles around it rather than vanishing.

Where this job could lead

None of the new jobs we've written up start from here yet. Could be you're the first. See the jobs AI is creating →

How are the neighbours doing?

There are 82 jobs in the “Technicians and associate professionals” family, averaging 66. This one is below the family average.

Pit this against any other job →