Briefs: NAB staff plans, CBA grows in Indonesia, Aussie on the hunt, ING in super launch

One executive of National Australia Bank foresees the day when the number of emplyees at big banks will falls from "tens of thousands" to "thousands". Lisa Gray, head of retail banking at NAB, told a business lunch staff numbers would shrink, ''not in the next few years but over the next couple of decades" thanks to technology improvements. The Sydney Morning Herald and the Financial Review reported on Gray's speech.

Commonwealth Bank is growing its lending to home buyers and small businesses in Indonesia at 30 per cent annually, the bank's executive general manager for Indonesia, Geoff Coates, told Dow Jones.

Aussie Home Loans is scouting for more acquisitions. James Symond, Aussie executive director, told The Adviser newsletter the aggregator was on the "hunt" for other acquisitions. "We finalised the deal with National Mortgage Brokers just last week and we are hopeful that this will be the first of many purchases for Aussie," he said. "We want to be the biggest and best aggregator, and to do that we know we need to work in the wholesale aggregation space as well."

ING Direct is entering the superannuation market. The bank announced yesterday that it will launch an online super offering in the September quarter. No other details were provided.