Westpac to bring back 1,000 jobs
In a boost for the Australia job market, Westpac will bring back around 1,000 jobs to Australia from overseas to improve its operations and customer support.
The decision was a result of demand for customer assistance at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, which created challenging conditions for home lending processing and call centres which needed to be addressed.
The new roles would support Westpac’s call centres, as well as providing processing and operation assistance to functions like home lending and consumer finance.
Peter King, Westpac chief executive, said the announcement was a further step in transforming the business, helping support local employment, reducing the risk of offshore disruption, and accelerating the simplification of processes through digitisation.
“We will also be returning all dedicated voice roles to Australia to enhance the capacity of our existing call centres; this will mean when a customer calls us, it will be answered by someone in Australia,” King said.
“Bringing jobs back to Australia has been made possible with the changing work patterns in response to the COVID-19 Pandemic, as well as the upgrade to our technology infrastructure over recent years.
“Together these have enabled our teams to operate effectively at home or in other locations when needed.”
The new roles would become part of a more distributed workforce structure across Australia with implementation expected to take 12 months.
The implementation would allow enough time to work through existing obligations with overseas partners, as well as develop an appropriate service model for the new jobs.
“We plan to fill the roles with new and existing employees, with the jobs distributed across regional and metro areas,” King said.
AUTHOR
Chris Dastoor
Recommended for you
Net cash flow on AMP’s platforms saw a substantial jump in the last quarter to $740 million, while its new digital advice offering boosted flows to superannuation and investment.
Insignia Financial has provided an update on the status of its private equity bidders as an initial six-week due diligence period comes to an end.
A judge has detailed how individuals lent as much as $1.1 million each to former financial adviser Anthony Del Vecchio, only learning when they contacted his employer that nothing had ever been invested.
Having rejected the possibility of an IPO, Mason Stevens’ CEO details why the wealth platform went down the PE route and how it intends to accelerate its growth ambitions in financial advice.
