BNZ is considering moving jobs to India.
Callum Francis, FIRST Union's national organiser for finance, says the union is currently involved in consultation meetings with BNZ "over the proposed offshoring of specialist banking roles," although no final decisions have been confirmed by BNZ.
"We believe that the offshoring of banking roles is a lost opportunity to employ more New Zealanders, and we will be making the feelings and perspectives of our members clear in discussions with the bank," Francis says.
His comments come after interest.co.nz was told BNZ's looking at moving, outsourcing, about 50 of a total 80 lending services jobs from its New Zealand operation payments department to Accenture in India. This comes after 70 to 80 jobs in BNZ's sanctions and fraud team were relocated to Accenture in India last year, with local workers affected redeployed.
Asked about the latest move, a BNZ spokesman says the bank's in consultation "with some BNZ colleagues on proposed changes to the way we operate."
"These are operational roles and are not related to frontline banking services. No final decisions have been made, however, as is the case with any potential change BNZ is committed to supporting colleagues and identifying redeployment opportunities where possible," the BNZ spokesman says.
"BNZ is committed to serving our customers brilliantly and delivering market leading products, services, and expertise."
"We want to bring the very best global expertise and capability and deploy it locally, to enhance our customers’ banking experiences. To help us bring global best practice to New Zealanders, we partner with a number of international organisations, such as Accenture, Microsoft, and Amazon," the BNZ spokesman adds.
Francis says regardless of the nature of BNZ’s proposal, First Union's negotiating on the basis none of its members should lose work "or be forced into an untenable position as a result of any offshoring project.”
"Banks are still the centres of communities around Aotearoa and we believe that any proposal to take roles offshore in an attempt to drive wages down could have very negative consequences in many regions," says Francis.
22 Comments
Many more than 50 new households are still arriving each day, so there is a roughly one in 4 chance they will bank with BNZ when some of them eventually save up enough to buy a house in NZ. Why give a damn about existing customers when your future sales are somewhat guaranteed by a country that needs landed labour for practically everything?
"Working From Home" is now "Working From India" I don't know why anyone is surprised, this is exactly what people predicted would happen once companies bought into the working from home ideology. The outsourcing of the Services Industry has only just begun - if its not to cheaper overseas workers, it will be to AI.
It's not new and is not linked in any way to working from home ideology. Services have been outsourcing to India for many decades - take call centres for one. 2007 and I was arranging use of a US airline voucher and their customer service was based in India. An accounting firm I was working for over a decade ago was outsourcing basic business accounts to India. All for the sake of making more profit, meanwhile the quality of work performed in NZ offices was below average.
While the call centre people you talk to can speak English their dialect is often unintelligible and they have little or no ability to follow questions that fall outside of the rote answers they are taught . All makes for a very frustrating and lengthy experience.
I think it's "get what you pay for" and kiwi companies often nickle and dime when they go into these negotiations. The likes of TCS and Accenture in India aren't sending us their best. I've seen both sides of the spectrum, some super smart and well educated folks that have added a ton of value, and drop-kicks that make you question humanity "do the needful"
It's interesting to see how quickly India is starting to become more quality in their professional services offering. It's gone from poor quality outsourcing across the board to now being "you get what you pay for" - and even 75% of NZ wages gives great results, and many of the brightest Indian students work within India at these centres - often more skilled and harder working than the average kiwi employee. I suppose we don't see it because the best and brightest from India don't generally come to New Zealand.
Between India and AI, I am worried about the run of the mill middle-class corporate employee in NZ. Auditing can be done from anywhere, and as one of the commentators said, if it can be done from home, it can be done from India for half the price.
The ANZ Mortgage operations team in India are fantastic to deal with, sure they only come online at 2pm, but when they do, things move a lot faster than they did in NZ.
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