Cost cutting will be one theme of the strategic review that National Australia Bank will present to the market next Thursday.
The Herald Sun reported that hundreds of full-time equivalent roles in Australia will be axed under the revamp, including contractors and permanent staff.
The contract workforce in New Zealand will also be targeted.
The cuts may raise questions over service standards. The Finance Sector Union told the newspaper NAB was experiencing staff shortages in its branch network.
NAB is also likely to confirm its offshoring agenda in spite the financial reporting controversies at IT services partner in India, Satyam Computer Services.
There's also a preview, of sorts, of the NAB review in the Financial Review that highlights management changes at Bank of New Zealand over recent months driven by the new BNZ chief executive Andrew Thorburn.
Bank of Queensland is also pruning staff, and aggressively so. The bank confirmed to the Herald Sun that it planned to reduce staff number by about 10 per cent, or around 150 people. Some of these staff have already left.
BOQ it itself in the midst of a strategic review, a process designed to produce an improved operating model, possibly through alliances with other financial services firms, the takeover of smaller deposit taking businesses or simply the outright sale of itself to another bank.