Big Four Banks Are Shipping Australian Jobs Offshore: What NAB's 170 Cuts Mean for the Industry in 2026

The Quiet Exodus of Australian Banking Jobs

When NAB confirmed on 26 March 2026 that it was cutting 170 net positions in Australia while simultaneously creating hundreds of roles in India and Vietnam, it barely registered as front-page news. That in itself tells you something about how normalised banking job offshoring has become in this country.

But the numbers, when you stack them up across all four major banks over the past five years, paint a picture that every Australian worker in financial services should be paying attention to. And if you’re a customer of any Big Four bank, the changes are already affecting the service you receive, whether you’ve noticed or not.

What NAB Actually Announced

Let’s be precise about NAB’s March 2026 restructuring, because the headline numbers don’t tell the full story.

The Finance Sector Union (FSU) confirmed that NAB is proposing to eliminate 447 positions across its Australian business division. At the same time, the bank is creating 277 new roles domestically. That’s a net loss of 170 Australian jobs.

But here’s the part that sparked the real anger: NAB is simultaneously creating at least 237 new positions at its offshore centres in India and Vietnam. The maths is straightforward. Australian roles disappear. Equivalent roles appear overseas at a fraction of the labour cost.

NAB’s statement framed the changes as “workforce optimisation” and emphasised the new domestic roles being created. The FSU was less diplomatic, calling it a continuation of a deliberate strategy to hollow out the Australian workforce.

The Roles Being Cut

The March 2026 cuts targeted NAB’s business banking division specifically. The affected roles span several categories:

Front-line relationship managers and in-branch staff were largely unaffected in this round, though the FSU warned that the definition of “front-line” keeps narrowing.

This Is Not Just a NAB Problem

NAB’s announcement is the latest in a pattern that stretches across all four major banks and back at least a decade. What’s changed in 2026 is the pace and the brazenness.

Commonwealth Bank

CBA, Australia’s largest bank by market capitalisation, has been expanding its operations in India (primarily Bangalore and Chennai) and the Philippines for years. The bank’s technology and operations workforce in India is estimated to number in the thousands, handling everything from software development to fraud monitoring.

In its 2025 annual report, CBA disclosed that it employed approximately 53,000 people globally, but the breakdown between Australian and offshore staff has become increasingly opaque.

Westpac

Westpac accelerated its offshore expansion following its 2023 strategic review. The bank’s Indian operations hub in Hyderabad has grown substantially, with roles in technology, data analytics, and operations support. Westpac cut around 300 Australian roles in late 2025 as part of what it called a “simplification program.”

ANZ

ANZ has maintained offshore operations across India, the Philippines, and New Zealand for over a decade. The bank’s 2024-25 restructuring, partly driven by its acquisition of Suncorp Bank, resulted in hundreds of role eliminations in Australia, with many functions consolidated offshore.

The Combined Impact

While exact figures are difficult to pin down (banks are not required to disclose detailed offshore headcount), the FSU estimates that the Big Four collectively employ between 15,000 and 20,000 people offshore, a number that has roughly doubled since 2019.

These are estimates based on union data, annual reports, and industry analysis. The actual numbers may be higher.

Why Banks Are Doing This

The business case for offshoring is brutally simple: cost.

An experienced operations worker in Australia might earn $70,000 to $90,000 per year plus superannuation (currently 11.5%, rising to 12% from 1 July 2026), leave entitlements, and other benefits. The fully loaded cost to the employer is often $100,000 or more.

An equivalent role in India or Vietnam might cost $15,000 to $25,000 AUD per year, fully loaded.

That’s a 75% to 85% cost reduction per role. Multiply that across thousands of positions and you’re talking about hundreds of millions of dollars in annual savings.

The Profit Pressure

Australia’s Big Four banks are among the most profitable in the world, but they’re facing margin pressure from multiple directions in 2026:

• Rising funding costs: The RBA’s back-to-back rate hikes (cash rate now at 4.35%) have increased the cost of wholesale funding.
• Competition from digital banks: Neobanks and fintechs are putting pressure on margins, particularly in home lending and transaction banking.
• Regulatory costs: APRA’s strengthened prudential standards (including CPS 230 on operational resilience, effective from 1 July 2025) have increased compliance spending.
• Technology investment: Banks are pouring billions into digital transformation, AI, and cybersecurity. CBA alone spent $1.9 billion on technology in FY2025.

The result is a relentless search for cost savings elsewhere, and labour is the biggest controllable cost.

The CBA Profit Benchmark

To understand the profit pressure, consider the numbers. In the 2025 financial year:

These are extraordinary profits by global standards, but shareholders and analysts constantly benchmark each bank against the others. A bank with a return on equity below 12% faces questions about capital allocation and efficiency. Offshoring is the easiest lever to pull.

What This Means for Australian Workers

The Immediate Impact

For the 170 NAB workers losing their jobs in March 2026, the immediate impact is financial stress at the worst possible time. With mortgage rates at multi-year highs (average variable rate above 6.5%), household budgets already under pressure from inflation at 3.7%, and the cost of living crisis showing no signs of easing, losing a well-paid banking job is devastating.

Under the Fair Work Act 2009, redundancy pay is calculated based on years of continuous service:

Most bank employees covered by enterprise agreements receive more generous terms. NAB’s enterprise agreement, negotiated with the FSU, typically provides additional weeks of pay and outplacement support. But no redundancy package fully compensates for the disruption of losing a career.

The Broader Employment Picture

The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) reported the unemployment rate at 4.3% in February 2026, the highest since mid-2022. The labour market is clearly softening, which makes finding equivalent work harder for displaced banking workers.

Financial services employment in Australia has been relatively stable at around 450,000, but the composition is shifting dramatically. Administrative and operational roles are declining while technology and specialist roles are growing. A displaced operations worker cannot simply walk into a cybersecurity or data science role without significant retraining.

The Skills Gap

This is where the offshoring trend creates a deeper structural problem for Australia. When banks move operational roles offshore, they don’t just lose headcount. They lose:

• Institutional knowledge: Workers who understand Australian regulatory requirements, customer expectations, and local market conditions.
• Training pipelines: Entry-level banking roles have traditionally been the pathway into financial services careers. As these roles disappear, the pipeline of future Australian banking professionals narrows.
• Regional employment: Bank processing centres in regional areas (NAB has operations in regional Victoria, for instance) provide crucial employment in towns with limited alternatives.

What This Means for Bank Customers

If you bank with any of the Big Four, offshoring is already affecting your experience, even if you can’t always pinpoint it.

Service Quality

The most visible impact is in customer service. When you call your bank’s support line, there’s an increasing chance you’ll be connected to an offshore call centre. While many offshore workers are skilled and professional, the reality is that complex Australian banking queries (think mortgage variations, business lending covenants, or superannuation-linked accounts) often require local knowledge that offshore staff may lack.

Customer satisfaction scores for the Big Four have been declining gradually. Roy Morgan’s monthly banking customer satisfaction survey showed average satisfaction across the majors at 74.2% in February 2026, down from 77.8% two years earlier.

Data and Privacy

When banking operations are performed offshore, your personal and financial data is being accessed and processed in jurisdictions with different privacy and data protection laws. While APRA’s CPS 234 (Information Security) requires banks to maintain robust security standards for all operations including offshore, the practical reality is that oversight becomes more complex.

The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) has flagged offshore data processing as an area of growing regulatory attention, particularly following several high-profile data breaches in 2024 and 2025.

Branch Closures

Offshoring and branch closures are related trends. As back-office functions move offshore, the economic case for maintaining physical branches weakens. The ABA (Australian Banking Association) reported that the number of bank branches in Australia fell from approximately 5,700 in 2017 to around 3,400 in 2025, a decline of 40%.

Regional and rural communities have been disproportionately affected. The Regional Banking Taskforce, established by the federal government in 2022, made 11 recommendations to maintain banking access in regional areas, but branch closures have continued.

The Regulatory Response

APRA’s Role

The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority has the primary oversight role for banking operations, including offshore activities. Key regulatory requirements include:

• CPS 231 (Outsourcing): Requires banks to maintain adequate oversight of all outsourced activities, including those performed offshore. Banks must demonstrate that outsourcing does not diminish their ability to meet prudential obligations.
• CPS 230 (Operational Resilience): Effective from 1 July 2025, this standard requires banks to identify critical operations and ensure they can continue to deliver essential services during disruptions, regardless of where those operations are performed.
• CPS 234 (Information Security): Requires banks to maintain information security capabilities commensurate with the threats to their information assets, including those held or processed offshore.

APRA has indicated it is monitoring the pace of offshoring across the banking sector but has stopped short of imposing explicit limits on offshore headcount.

Political Response

The federal government has been reluctant to intervene directly in bank staffing decisions. However, the issue is gaining political traction, particularly ahead of the next federal election (due by May 2028 at the latest).

The FSU has called for mandatory disclosure of offshore staffing ratios by all APRA-regulated institutions, a requirement that banks have resisted. Several crossbench senators have expressed support for such transparency measures.

In March 2026, following NAB’s announcement, the FSU launched a public campaign calling for a “Banking Jobs Guarantee” that would require major banks to maintain a minimum percentage of their workforce in Australia as a condition of their banking licences.

What Can Workers Do?

If you’re currently working in financial services and concerned about your role being offshored, here are practical steps to consider:

1. Upskill in Technology

The roles that are staying in Australia are overwhelmingly technology-focused. If you’re in operations or administration, investing in skills around data analytics, cybersecurity, cloud computing, or AI can make you harder to replace. Many universities and TAFEs offer short courses and micro-credentials that can be completed while working.

2. Move Toward Advisory Roles

Client-facing advisory roles are the hardest to offshore because they require local market knowledge, regulatory understanding, and relationship skills. If you can pivot from processing to advising, your job security improves significantly.

3. Know Your Rights

If you’re facing redundancy, understand your entitlements under both the Fair Work Act and your enterprise agreement. The FSU provides free advice to members, and the Fair Work Ombudsman offers guidance on redundancy entitlements.

4. Consider Smaller Institutions

Credit unions, mutual banks, and smaller ADIs (authorised deposit-taking institutions) generally have a stronger commitment to Australian-based operations. Institutions like Bendigo Bank, Bank of Queensland, and various credit unions employ predominantly Australian-based staff.

5. Build Your Professional Network

In a tightening job market, your professional network is your most valuable asset. Financial planning, accounting, mortgage broking, and other adjacent professions value experienced banking professionals.

The Bigger Picture: Australia’s Services Economy

The offshoring of banking jobs is part of a broader trend affecting Australia’s services economy. As technology makes it easier to perform knowledge work remotely, the cost advantage of offshore labour markets becomes harder for companies to ignore.

This creates a fundamental challenge for Australia’s economic model. We have one of the highest minimum wages in the world ($24.10 per hour from 1 July 2025), strong employment protections, and a high cost of living. These are features of a wealthy, developed economy, but they also make Australian labour expensive by global standards.

The question is not whether offshoring will continue (it will), but whether Australia can create enough high-value jobs in new industries to replace the ones being lost. The government’s Future Made in Australia policy, focused on renewable energy, critical minerals, and advanced manufacturing, is one attempt to answer this question, but results will take years to materialise.

What Happens Next

Markets are pricing in a cumulative 65 basis points of RBA rate increases through 2026, which would push the cash rate to 4.75%. Higher rates mean higher funding costs for banks, which intensifies the pressure to cut expenses elsewhere, including labour.

The May 2026 federal budget may include measures addressing banking sector employment, though expectations are modest. The government is walking a tightrope between appearing to support Australian jobs and avoiding policies that could increase costs for an already-stressed banking system.

For now, the trend is clear. Australia’s Big Four banks are becoming increasingly global operations with an Australian headquarters and regulatory home, but a workforce that is steadily shifting offshore.

Whether that’s good or bad depends on who you ask. Bank shareholders see lower costs and higher returns. Bank workers see fewer opportunities and less security. Bank customers see a service experience that is gradually changing in ways they may not fully understand.

The one thing everyone should agree on is that transparency matters. If Australia’s banks are going to reshape their workforces, the public deserves clear data on how many Australian jobs are being replaced, where they’re going, and what the long-term plan is for the financial services workforce in this country.

Find the Right Financial Professional

Navigating career transitions, redundancy packages, and financial restructuring during uncertain times requires expert guidance. Whether you need a financial planner to review your redundancy payout, an accountant to optimise your tax position, or a mortgage broker to restructure your home loan, WealthWorks connects you with verified Australian professionals who specialise in exactly these situations.