NAB to cut 222 back office jobs
National Australia Bank is planning to cut 222 jobs in the personal lending, technology, corporate finance and client coverage departments.
Consultations with staff were scheduled to finish on Wednesday, according to the Finance Sector Union, which called an urgent meeting of members this week to discuss the redundancies.
NAB only recently agreed to new pay deal with the FSU. Natalie Boog
It comes just over a week after The Australian Financial Review’s Street Talk column revealed the bank was looking to trim its headcount and that 10 per cent of the markets team, 60 people, were set for the axe.
A NAB spokesman said: “We regularly look at the way we work to ensure we are serving our customers well. The environment we operate in is constantly changing, and we need to have the right skills, capabilities and structures to improve productivity and better support our customers.
“This means certain roles may no longer be required or need to be moved to support other teams.”
The spokesman said the decision was “difficult”. It is understood that these were not customer-facing staff and that NAB has actually increased its total headcount by 4000 people to 36,000 in a little over a year.
Westpac cut about 300 jobs as part of an ongoing push to reduce its office headcount by 20 per cent in June. CBA gutted 251 jobs across its IT, business bank and retail bank in an effort to reduce costs in late July as well.
NAB only recently agreed to a new pay deal with the FSU which guaranteed pay rises of up to 17.5 per cent over four years for 25,000 staff. That deal, which included some senior managers, also enshrined work-from-home rights for the relevant employees.
In the first half of the 2023 financial year, NAB’s personnel expenses
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