Technology workers are facing potential redundancies at ANZ, NAB, and Bendigo Bank, after all three financial institutions announced significant job cuts this week.

ANZ announced Tuesday that around 3,500 jobs would be cut across its global workforce by September 2026, including around 1,000 contractors.

Such a cut would equal almost 10 per cent of the bank's staff, but the Finance Sector Union (FSU) claimed 14 per cent of workers from the company’s technology and retail divisions would be affected.

ANZ did not respond to a request for comment on the union’s claims.

In a prior statement, ANZ said it decided to remove some roles “to simplify the bank, strengthen its focus on its priorities and deliver for its customers”, and said there would be “limited impacts to frontline customer facing roles”.

The FSU accused ANZ of “betraying” its workers, and described the planned job cuts as “unhinged, reckless, unnecessary and driven by pure greed”.

The union also raised concerns over what it called “a humiliating email botch-up" which recently saw some ANZ staff accidentally receive automated redundancy emails before they were officially informed.

“Workers built this bank and kept it strong through crisis after crisis,” FSU national president Wendy Streets said.

"Now those same workers are being discarded so ANZ executives can feed an out-of-control profit machine.”

The FSU said it would take ANZ's job cuts to the Fair Work Commission, in order to fight for workers.

Staff at Suncorp Bank, which ANZ acquired in 2024, were protected from the cuts due to ANZ’s agreements with the Queensland and federal governments.

Layoffs have ‘nothing to do with AI’, ANZ boss says

Despite many large businesses implementing artificial intelligence technologies in the race for lower overheads and higher profits, ANZ CEO Nuno Matos said Tuesday that the mass layoffs at his bank had “absolutely nothing to do with AI”.

"This is not about profits … This is about what we need to do for a brighter company, for a better company,” he said at a press conference.

“The people in the branches are not being touched, we’re not touching our call centres.

“We’re not touching, for the most part, our complaints management team.”


ANZ says it is not laying off workers in its branches or call centres. Image: Shutterstock

The FSU has accused Australian banks — which are among the most profitable in the world — of “replacing workers in secure jobs with offshoring and automation”.

The Commonwealth Bank (CBA), which has offshored some technology roles, recently reversed a decision to cut 45 customer service jobs it had planned to partly replace with AI bots.

The FSU also condemned Bank of Queensland earlier this month after the company entered a strategic partnership with French technology consultancy firm Capgemini "for agentic AI, information technology, and business processing services”.

The bank, which had already established a similar partnership with Microsoft, said its new Capgemini deal was expected to lower its overall costs by “at least $30 million”, largely from “the consolidation of external service providers” and jobs being offshored.

The FSU estimated BOQ would cut up to 200 jobs because of the deal, “including axing and sending offshore more than half of its contact centre workforce”.

“We warned that once CBA opened the door to outsourcing and AI, the other banks would follow and BOQ’s decision proves we were right,” FSU national secretary Julia Angrisano said.

NAB cuts back technology and enterprise team

NAB confirmed on Wednesday, just one day after ANZ’s announcement, that it would remove 410 roles from its technology and enterprise operations division.

The FSU alleged the bank planned to establish 127 new roles in India and Vietnam.

While NAB did not respond to that claim when contacted by Information Age, a spokesperson said some new roles would be created in Australia, but did not specify how many, or in which teams.

“While some roles are no longer required or may move location, we are also creating new roles across all locations as necessary, to ensure we are set up for success and can deliver better outcomes,” they said.

“Having a global workforce is helping us generate better outcomes for customers in a number of ways, leveraging global time zones to extend our hours of operation, speeding up processes and improving turnaround times for our customers.”


NAB says some of its roles are 'no longer required or may move location'. Image: Shutterstock

Bendigo Bank restructure hits tech

The FSU said on Thursday that members working at Bendigo Benk had been told 145 jobs in the company's technology division and 13 jobs in mortgage help would be lost as part of a restructure.

In total, 637 technology workers would be affected by the changes in some way, the union alleged.

It said staff in the technology division "were given just six days of consultation for this massive restructure", while those in mortgage help were given two days.

The union said it had already referred Bendigo Bank to the Fair Work Commission "after it failed to provide sufficient information to workers about the change and only offering to extend the consultation period by three days".

“Three banks in less than a week have cut jobs — ANZ, NAB, and now Bendigo," said Angrisano.

"Add BOQ last week and it’s clear this is a tidal wave of cuts hitting workers across the sector.

"… Customers, once again, pay the price when experienced technology and mortgage help staff are lost, with longer wait times and reduced services, particularly at a time when lending will be more accessible to first home buyers."

Bendigo Bank was contacted for comment.

This story was updated at 12:12pm AEST to include news of Bendigo Bank's restructure.