The restructuring of Asgard’s Perth office will affect 120 roles, with up to 40 employees impacted by offshoring, according to BT Financial Group.
BT Financial Group, Westpac’s wealth management arm, stated that the offshoring of “high volume, low complexity processing work” in its Perth processing and administration teams would impact between 30 and 40 roles over the next 15 months. It added that about 20 per cent of the 120 employees affected were contractors.
“We will work with impacted employees to help them identify opportunities for redeployment within BT Financial Group Customer Service and the broader Westpac group where possible,” it stated.
The Finance Sector Union (FSU), however, asserted that the restructure would see the Asgard Perth workforce cut by a third and national secretary Leon Carter stated that the bank group’s decision to offshore was “unacceptable and reflected a view that maximising profits was all Westpac was interested in”.
Carter said that the restructure, “dressed up in the language of a strategic review by Westpac”, was all about cutting jobs in Perth and sending some of the work overseas and some to Sydney, “for no other reason than to boost profit”.
Carter said the community did not support offshoring and restructuring, adding that 90 per cent of the public and 93 per cent of workers surveyed wanted a commitment from the Government and banks to stop offshoring.
BT general manager of customer service Gai McGrath said the restructuring at Asgard would focus on working with advisers to increase their usage of self service and straight through processing options, continuing to utilise offshore business partners for higher volume and less complex work and expanding its Asgard Contact Centre in Sydney to take on the work currently performed in Perth “to ensure a more consistent and streamlined customer experience”.
“These changes will ensure we are best positioned to meet adviser needs into the future through a high service model that takes advantage of scale benefits and improved resourcing,” she said.
Referring to the entire Westpac Group and in light of announcement last week about IT restructuring, a Westpac spokesperson said there were no further announcements regarding offshoring at present, simply reiterating Gail Kelly’s comments about the possibility of revisiting its moratorium that put a halt to offshoring during the global financial crisis. Kelly stated that the group might revisit its offshoring strategy as unemployment figures improved.
