ANZ National Bank sends work to India

ANZ National Bank will move up to 500 jobs to Bangalore in India over the next 18 months.

Staff in Wellington and Auckland were told at morning meetings yesterday that the bank would move up to 5 per cent of its back-office work to Bangalore by the end of next year.

About 1 per cent of the work would be moved this year.

ANZ National Bank chief executive Graham Hodges said the jobs were in processing and operational functions such as setting up loans or accounts and data entry.

None of the jobs dealt directly with customers.

All affected staff would be offered new positions in the bank, replacing some of the 800 workers who left each year.

"We can redeploy our staff that we have here into more customer service roles which add value to our business. As a result none of our staff need to lose their jobs," Mr Hodges said.

The bank wanted to make better use of skilled staff here while gaining the financial benefit of lower labour costs in India.

"Over time this is going to continue to happen in New Zealand" as the country moved to a knowledge economy with a high-skill, high-income workforce.

The exact number of jobs affected was yet to be determined, but "several hundred people" would be employed in Bangalore to do the New Zealand work, he said.

Union delegate Bernadine McGinness said staff were "absolutely shocked, and what they are worried about is their future".

Bank workers union Finsec had been in talks with the bank on staff concerns about understaffing in the processing division.

"Now we find out they have been planning to get rid of us."

Finsec said ANZ National was putting its billion-dollar profits ahead of staff and customers.

The jobs being sent to India were good jobs with good wages, some in the top third of New Zealand incomes, campaigns director Andrew Campbell said.

"ANZ National is leading a race to the bottom for cheap labour in India."

There was no guarantee that staff would be moved to comparable positions, or that those jobs would not go overseas.

ANZ in Australia had moved nearly 540 jobs overseas, but only 38 per cent of affected staff were redeployed in the bank.

But the number of ANZ staff in South Asia and the Middle East had tripled in the past four years.

Finsec's sister union in Australia estimated labour costs in India could be up to 80 per cent lower.

Mr Hodges said it was likely that New Zealand would gain more specialist processing work from other parts of the group and total numbers would increase as the bank grew in the next few years.

The move was the next step in a continuing business transformation programme, he said.

In the past three years the bank had increased staff by 800 to total more than 9000.

The time difference between New Zealand and Bangalore would also double the working day for processing work to 16 hours, improving customer service.

ANZ set up the Bangalore office in 1989. It employs about 1800 tertiary-qualified staff.