NAB to cut 100 staff as major banks feel margin squeeze

The Australian 12:00am April 20, 2017

Richard Gluyas

The major banks are under mounting pressure to pull the cost lever and cut the size of their workforces, after suffering from intensifying margin pressure in the lead-up to the close of the March half-year.

The Australian has learned that National Australia Bank told staff early last month that a restructure would proceed with at least 100 jobs to go.

While 400 new roles would be created, including 10 in frontline risk, this would be more than offset by about 500 job losses, with some of the affected staff to be redeployed.

The restructure was mainly at the consultant, senior analyst and manager level.

ANZ Bank also confirmed yesterday that a February restructure had resulted in the loss of 35 information technology positions.

Since the global financial crisis, bank net interest margins have been under sustained pressure, with the industry’s average margin contracting by 28 basis points from 2.3 per cent in the 2009 financial year to 2.02 per cent.

The trend has partly been driven by the sharp fall in global rates towards zero, or even less than zero in some northern hemisphere countries.

Regulators have also been demanding ever-deeper buffers of lower-yielding but high-quality capital and liquid assets to improve the resilience of the financial system.

Australian Prudential Regulation Authority chairman Wayne Byres foreshadowed early this month a further strengthening of capital requirements, preceded by the release of an information paper around the middle of the year.

The paper will outline how the regulator expects to implement the financial system inquiry’s call for an “unquestionably strong” banking system in the top quartile globally for capital strength.

“By anyone’s standard, we have a banking system that has a notable concentration in housing,” Mr Byres said.

“It is therefore important we give that issue particular attention as we think about how to put the concept of ‘unquestionably strong’ into practice.”

Margins have been crimped, as well, by long-term anaemic credit growth and huge spending on IT systems to improve the customer experience and help fend off the threat from ambitious fintech companies.

With costs galloping ahead, banks have had to focus on productivity improvements, including job cuts.

The industry’s workforce contracted significantly in the 2016 financial year, with the number of full-time employees falling 2.4 per cent to 161,226.

Despite this, total personnel costs increased, largely driven by one-off items such as the implementation of enterprise bargaining agreements.

NAB said in February that the number of full-time jobs had fallen by 488 in the December quarter.

Among the majors, ANZ was the biggest shedder of jobs last year.