Westpac cuts 560 jobs, sends 150 to India

Westpac Banking Corporation is poised to axe more than 400 jobs and send another 150 offshore in the latest round of job cuts at the big banks.

Westpac on Thursday briefed workers about the 410 job cuts and positions it will relocate to its operations in India as part of a group-wide restructure.

"We are commencing consultation with a number of our employees around changes to Westpac," a Westpac spokeswoman said in an email.

The Finance Sector Union (FSU) told AAP 150 positions would be moved to Bangalore, India, and it feared the bank could make even more job cuts throughout 2012.

The roles affected are mostly back office, non-executive support roles, but there will be a decline in the bank's overall standard of customer service, FSU national secretary Leon Carter said.

"They're saying this will be the most significant announcement they'll make this year but there's no guarantee that it's the last one," Mr Carter said.

"Westpac continues to make a multi billion-dollar profit and has the capacity, and we say the obligation, to invest in and protect Australian jobs not continue to sacrifice them on the alter of profit."

The FSU will try to minimise forced redundancies and maximise redeployment of employees whose roles have been made redundant, he added.

Westpac will shift 150 jobs to its third party provider in Bangalore along with 28 IT management roles in its wholly owned BT Financial Group and Westpac Institutional Bank.

Workers in India are usually paid between one-third and a half the wage of Australian workers in comparable jobs.

Westpac also is reviewing all business units excluding its New Zealand operations.

The bank flagged in January that any firm decisions on jobs and redundancies could take more than a year to be made.

The bank previously said it would reduce its 37,712-strong workforce in 2012, but had no target numbers.

Westpac's move comes amid job cuts at other banks.

Earlier this week Suncorp Group said it would shift 77 jobs offshore to Bangalore, while ANZ Banking Group in January announced 131 employees in Victoria would lose their jobs.

Several hundred more jobs will be shed from the Melbourne-based lender in the next six months, ANZ's chief of Australian operations Phil Chronican said at the time.

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