(Reuters) – The Australian banking trade union said on Thursday that Westpac Banking Corp, one of the country’s top lenders, has cut around 132 jobs across divisions, with some of these roles being shifted to companies in India and the Philippines.
From the bank’s risk division, 62 roles are being reduced at a time when the country faces an “unprecedented level” of scams and cybersecurity threats, the Finance Sector Union (FSU) said in a statement.
The job cuts across the risk and operations divisions come on top of the 20 layoffs at its sales support unit in Mortgage Services division in January, which were also outsourced to Concentrix, FSU said.
Westpac did not immediately respond to Reuters’ request for confirmation on the job cuts.
“Westpac’s strategy of continually outsourcing jobs to external service providers does nothing for staff morale and sends the message that staff need to toe the line or their jobs could be offshored,” FSU National Secretary Julia Angrisano said on Thursday.
About 50 roles from the lender’s operations unit will be transferred to information technology companies such as Genpact Ltd, TATA Consulting Services and Concentrix Corp.
“Instead of running an integrated banking operation, Westpac now looks more like a patchwork of third-party providers,” Angrisano said.
(Reporting by Sameer Manekar in Bengaluru; Editing by Shailesh Kuber and Sherry Jacob-Phillips)
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