National Australia Bank (NAB) is continuing a drive to ship jobs offshore by announcing it will dispatch another 41 roles to India.
The move affects staff in NAB’s wealth management arm, MLC, within its finance and reporting unit who perform data entry and back-office functions.
The jobs will go to Accenture in Bangalore, swelling NAB’s workforce there to around 150.
MLC employees were informed of the decision yesterday.
It follows months of uncertainty for staff following a review of the bank’s operations that has seen 175 jobs sent offshore to date.
NAB would not confirm the actual number of staff affected by the outsourcing, saying the figure will be confirmed later in the year.
A NAB spokeswoman said the 41 roles did not equate to 41 people but were rather job functions that could be performed by more than one person.
She said the bank had a strong focus on deploying employees affected by outsourcing to other parts of the bank.
The Finance Sector Union (FSU) said the decision affects 90 MLC employees, the majority in Sydney.
It said the latest announcements take NAB’s tally of jobs offshored beyond the 500 mark and reviews of hundreds of more jobs are continuing.
“The jobs being lost are highly skilled accountancy, financial and taxation reporting jobs,” the union’s policy and communications manager Rod Masson said.
“They are value-adding functions and as a country we should be looking at investing in these skills, not flogging them off overseas to the lowest bidder.”
The union said 45 staff in customer service and sales in Melbourne have been told their jobs or part of them will also be offshored to India, a claim NAB has rejected.
“There are no numbers on the table and nothing has been confirmed,” the NAB spokeswoman said.
“It’s just a review to look for opportunities to simplify processes and spend more time talking on the phone to customers,” she said.
NAB has employed 700 people in customer service jobs over the last 12 months.
The bank’s net profit for the half year to 31 March 2007 was up 7.1 per cent to $2.14 billion.
MLC’s cash earning were up 26.2 per cent for the same period to $183 million.
