ABA CEO Simon Birmingham interview with ABC Radio National’s Sally Sara on jobs in banking

E&OE
Radio Interview
ABC Radio National with Sally Sara
21 October 2026.

Topics: Jobs in banking

Sally Sara: First, NAB is the latest major bank to announce a significant restructure of its workforce, with plans to cut up to 2,500 jobs. NAB says most of the jobs will go by the end of the year, citing economic challenging conditions and rapid technological change. Just this year, rival bank ANZ finalised a restructure of around 3,500 jobs, while 1,000 jobs have been affected at the Commonwealth Bank. Simon Birmingham is the CEO of the Australian Banking Association and joins me now. Simon, welcome back to Radio National Breakfast. Simon Birmingham, do we have you there? He might have just disappeared briefly. We’ll just see if we can get Simon Birmingham back up on the line. Got you there, Simon. Can you hear me coming through?

Simon Birmingham: I’m hearing you loud and clear, Sally.

Sally Sara: Simon, perfect. Thank you for that. On the job losses at National Australia Bank, what should investors and customers read into the size of these layoffs?

Simon Birmingham: Well, Sally, I think it’s important to give a little industry context first. These are, of course, incredibly challenging for individuals who will be affected, and thoughts always go to them. But over the last five years, the total growth in major bank employees has been around 15 per cent, and it’s grown – surprisingly, perhaps, to many listeners – each and every year across that cohort of major banks to around 175,000 Australians.

Sally Sara: Sorry, just to clarify, these are onshore jobs. These are not overseas positions?

Simon Birmingham: That’s right. These are Australian jobs, 175,000 Australians. That in total has grown to some extent each of the last five years, and around 15% in total. But it is now a highly competitive and increasingly challenging environment that the banks are operating in, as is well reported. Currently, loan activity is down around 12 to 20 per cent in different categories, and competition is incredibly fierce. We saw close to 700 000 Australians switch their home loans last year in search for a more competitive and better rate. So, all of that is certainly creating an environment where the need to find efficiencies is a real one across each of the different institutions.

Sally Sara: The Finance Sector Union has called these cuts “despicable,” noting that workers were told at the same time as the stock exchange. Have workers been kept in the dark, as the union claims?

Simon Birmingham: Well, look, I can’t speak to individual handlings of circumstances, across the industry we see these challenging circumstances, there’s a responsibility to work through each of these issues with their workforces, as I am sure banks will do. But we also have, in terms of major listed companies, continuous disclosure responsibilities to the stock exchange, so I’m not sure that’s a particularly fair comparison or parallel.

Sally Sara: The union says 180 roles will be offshored to Vietnam and India. Is that correct? And what will that mean for customers?

Simon Birmingham: Sally, again, as I said, I can’t speak to an individual bank’s decisions. As I said before, what we’ve seen is significant growth in the Australian workforce over the years, and I think the NAB CEO has been pretty clear in terms of his desire to see Australian jobs wherever possible, and equally been pretty clear in terms of the circumstances that have brought this about: the challenge in lack of productivity, the challenge in terms of decline in loan activity, and indeed that very competitive – not just for loans, but also for deposits, which of course drives up the cost base on the other side of the ledger. And while that’s good news for consumers to see banks having fierce competition for deposits and fierce competition for lenders, it does create a more difficult operating environment.

Sally Sara: There are now job losses across three of the big four banks, totalling around 7,000 jobs in little more than 12 months. What’s behind this? Is this artificial intelligence kicking into the workplace?

Simon Birmingham: No, it’s many of the factors that I was just speaking about in terms of the overall competition and change. Look, artificial intelligence is going to have an impact on the Australian economy. We can either allow it to have an impact where we don’t adopt and change, and we therefore don’t see the productivity benefits, or an impact where we try to seize as much of the AI work for Australia and do adapt and change and try to actually get the maximum productivity benefits from it. And the latter is really the only path if we wish to continue to cement our place as a high-income, high-standard-of-living country as we enjoy at present and need to work hard to continue to be in the future.

Sally Sara: Simon Birmingham, thank you very much.

Simon Birmingham: Thanks, Sally. My pleasure.

Economic Resilience