Westpac makes local call on jobs

WESTPAC will invest $45m a year to bring 1000 loan-processing and call-centre jobs back to Australia, prompting a call by the Finance Sector Union (FSU) for other banks to follow suit.

The bank’s chief executive, Peter King, said response times had been too slow after a surge in demand for customer assistance at the start of the coronavirus pandemic.

“(This) is a further step in transforming our business and mortgage operations, helping to support local employment, reducing the risk of offshore disruption, and accelerating our ability to simplify processes through digitisation,” Mr King said.

Westpac would return all “dedicated voice roles” to Australia to enhance the capacity of its call centres, he said.

This year, the bank experienced an erosion of its mortgage market share due to the inability of third-party contractors offshore to set up appropriate working-from-home arrangements during the COVID-19 lockdown period.

Delayed processing of loan applications resulted in borrowers going elsewhere.

Once the initial flood of applications for loan deferrals went through the system, volumes started to pick up.

The FSU has urged all banks to start repatriating jobs that were sent offshore for cost-cutting reasons.

National secretary Julia Angrisano said the FSU had long campaigned against offshoring Australian back-office and call-centre jobs to Asia.

“COVID-19 has shown the folly of sending jobs that were once done in Australia offshore to places like India and the Philippines,” Ms Angrisano said.

“We’ve seen too many jobs sent overseas in the name of increasing bank profits and it’s time all Australian bank and financial services institutions brought those jobs home.

“There have always been concerns over the security of sending the financial information of Australian consumers offshore.”

Economic recovery would be a major priority for the foreseeable future and the nation needed a reconstruction plan to get Australians into “good, well-paying jobs”, she said.

The process of returning Westpac’s services to Australia would take about 12 months, Mr King said. The jobs would be filled by existing and new employees, and distributed across regional and metropolitan areas.

Westpac said it would maintain relationships with existing strategic partners offshore, particularly in certain areas of technology and operations.