Bank bosses face inquiry over AI and offshore job cuts

Résumé détaillé

Australia's big four bank bosses face a two-day parliamentary grilling over thousands of AI and offshore job cuts despite posting multi-billion dollar profits.

Since September 2025, the big four banks have sacked - or are planning to sack - about 6000 of them.

More than 10,000 Australian banking jobs have disappeared in the past two years, the Financial Services Union estimates, many offshored or replaced by artificial intelligence.

Among them were 3500 ANZ employees shown the door in the year to September, the bank reported on Monday, at the same time it posted statutory net profit up 23 per cent to $7.27 billion.

Why that's happening is expected to occupy much of a two-day parliamentary grilling of all the big four's bosses, beginning on Thursday.

Westpac, which will appear after ANZ during the first day of hearings, flagged in October it would strike 250 employees from its payrolls.

The same month, NAB announced it would shed 1500 workers before Christmas, then delayed the layoffs to late January.

Commonwealth Bank, whose statutory net profit nearly tipped $11 billion in the 12 months to September, is expected to have jettisoned 1000 jobs by the end of 2026.

"They're cutting Australian jobs and getting that work done offshore and this is at a time where they're announcing very healthy profits," banking committee chair Ed Husic told ABC TV on Wednesday.

"The behaviour of big business - in particular in the way that it uses AI and the impacts on jobs - is really serious."

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