ANZ's new boss Nuno Matos has kicked off a widely-expected productivity drive with a plan to shed 3,500 staff.
An ANZ New Zealand spokesman says the announced changes "are mostly focused on our Australian business. There are no significant restructurings planned for New Zealand."
ANZ NZ employed around 7500 people in New Zealand as at 30 September 2024, including full-time and part-time employees and contractors.
The spokeman said; "As part of our ongoing commitment to operate efficiently and deliver for customers, ANZ NZ regularly reviews how our business is structured. These reviews are part of our normal course of business, and there are no significant changes underway in New Zealand outside of that.
"There are some small changes underway in New Zealand which may impact between 20 and 30 mostly head office roles.
"These reviews are part of our normal course of business and represent similar levels of organisational change compared with prior years."
"We are operating in a rapidly evolving and highly competitive banking environment," Matos said in an ASX/NZX announcement that made no mention of New Zealand.
"As we continue our strategic review, we are eliminating duplication and complexity, stopping work that doesn't support our priorities and sharpening our focus on improving our non-financial risk management practices across the bank."
8 Comments
The first of the coming wave of the AI induced, major staffing backburns??
Watch out below.......as the NZ economy teeters on risky ledges already.
The NZ Housing Ponzi has no support left.
The first of the coming wave of the AI induced, major staffing backburns??
Accenture's recent research and industry analysis indicate that while banks have widely adopted chatbots, the technology often fails to meet customer expectations and deliver on its promises. Key findings include:
Basic Functionality Falls Short: Most bank chatbots still struggle with even simple requests such as retrieving documents or resolving standard issues. This leads to frequent customer frustration, as chatbots tend to “respond rather than understand,” functioning more like static FAQs than helpful digital advisors.
Customer Experience Issues: Many users report that chatbots are quick and responsive but “infuriatingly limited.” Customers are often forced to repeat information, face rigid menu structures, and find the bots incapable of handling anything beyond routine queries. This lack of conversational intelligence undermines the user experience and reduces trust in the channel.
Only around 20% of bank customers are currently using chatbots for banking interactions, simply because they don't work.
https://www.accenture.com/content/dam/accenture/final/industry/banking/…
There are no significant restructurings planned for New Zealand.
Put (Subject to change) after this one.
"As we continue our strategic review, we are eliminating duplication and complexity, stopping work that doesn't support our priorities and sharpening our focus on improving our non-financial risk management practices across the bank."
Are they firing all the Dodgey Markets traders? Maybe its just the lazy bastards who refuse to work on Christmas day..... lets be honest, this is all about managing the Expenses to Income ratio
ANZ call centre staff might as well give up the ghost.
AI cannot yet replace a call center person but they can listern to the call, convert it 100% to txt and summarise it for diary notes etc, so the call center person does not need to do it, if its 15% of typical call center staff time, you can remove 15% of total staff and keep service levels, slowly AI will be able top do more and more.
Writing is on the wall for call center staff globally really, this is just a recession response to perceived flat or flattening revenue growth, all banks will do this before xmas.
Bank profits will stop growing so they have to attack expenses.
AI cannot yet replace a call center person but they can listern to the call, convert it 100% to txt and summarise it for diary notes etc, so the call center person does not need to do it, if its 15% of typical call center staff time, you can remove 15% of total staff and keep service levels, slowly AI will be able top do more and more.
So you're saying that the customer has to wear it until banks LLMs are deep enough to provide a satisfactory service?
You can only get away with that if your business sector is monopolistic / oligopolistic in structure and wears the pants in the relationship with customers.
sounds like banking.....
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