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An office full of empty desks at the Bangalore HQ of CBA’s Indian subsidiary
Commonwealth Bank yesterday confirmed that it is again preparing to expand the operations of its Indian subsidiary after notifying around 244 Australian staff and contractors that their roles were being relocated to Bangalore.
A bank spokesman confirmed to Banking Day that the latest offshoring program would mostly affect 240 workers employed on short term contracts due to expire at the end of December.
Another 29 full time roles in Australia were also being made redundant, but the spokesperson said that 25 of these positions were currently vacant and would not be reactivated in India.
Banking Day understands that the jobs being relocated to the bank’s Bangalore operation cover technology, risk and financial crime functions.
The bank spokesperson indicated that the decision to migrate the roles to CBA’s Indian subsidiary was part of a strategic effort to reduce the bank’s reliance on vendors and contractors.
“As well as growing our technical and specialist capabilities in key areas of demand, we are seeking to strengthen the corporate knowledge we maintain in-house and reduce risk by minimising reliance on vendors and contractors,” the spokesperson said.
“Our aim is to retain talent where we can, and where possible we always try to find alternative roles in the Group for our people who are impacted by business changes.
“At the same time and as part of our commitment to developing our world-class technology and operational capabilities, we have expanded our operations both here in Australia and CBA India.
“The growth of CBA India complements existing initiatives to invest in our Australian workforce and develop a healthy pipeline of talent.”
In 2019, the bank’s chief executive Matt Comyn signalled a major expansion of the Indian subsidiary’s operations based at the Manyata Technology Park in the northern part of Bangalore.
However, those plans stalled early in 2020 following the global outbreak of Covid-19.
CBA resumed the offshoring project in August 2021 when it announced it was sending 100 technology, compliance and service roles to Bangalore.
The latest announcement marks a new phase in the Indian expansion that could see thousands of jobs moved out of Australia.
According to a report in the Australian Financial Review in August 2019, Comyn reportedly indicated that up to 4000 roles could be relocated to India.
Evidence of the growing importance of India as an operations centre for the CBA group is visible on the bank’s online jobs board where on Wednesday night 77 positions or 16 per cent of all listed vacancies were located in Bangalore.
While most of the Indian vacancies are technology-focused, CBA is also advertising for new Bangalore staff to fill roles covering privacy, data risk, operational risk management and compliance.
The CBA spokesperson said the bank hired an additional 850 technology specialists in Australia last year and planned to recruit another 1000 locally in the current financial year.
One of the keys to the sustainability of CBA’s offshoring program is that it is predominantly focused on migrating roles to a wholly owned subsidiary of the bank.
Proprietary control of the Bangalore centre meant the bank was able to maintain operations during major Covid outbreaks by organising staff to work from home.
That is a sharp contrast to Westpac’s experience in India in April 2020 when its mortgage processing activities ground almost to a halt because it was captive to external service providers that were forced to shutter their operations after the Indian Government enforced a lockdown in Bangalore.
Since then Westpac has repatriated its mortgage servicing functions to Australia.