Westpac puts 28 IT jobs under review

Westpac Banking Corporation has put the future of 28 IT management roles in doubt by commencing a review of their roles as part of a group-wide restructure.

Westpac on Tuesday informed the employees in BT Financial Group and Westpac Institutional Bank that their jobs were under review.

However, a final decision on which jobs would be cut has not been made, Westpac spokeswoman Supreet Gosal told AAP.

No redundancies had been made and the bank will redeploy the employees where possible, she said.

The review has been driven by a group-wide corporate restructure announced by Westpac last November which will result in the creation of a new group services division embracing IT, property services, legal services and banking operations.

The restructure will also create an Australian Financial Services division which will combine retail and business banking, St George Bank, BT, banking products and risk management.

It will be led by former ANZ Banking Group retail banking boss Brian Hartzer who has quit his London-based role as chief executive of Royal Bank of Scotland's retail operations to return to Australia.

Westpac also is reviewing all business units including its New Zealand operations, and firm decisions on jobs and redundancies could take over a year to be made, she said.

Westpac previously flagged it would reduce its 37,712-strong workforce in 2012, but has no target numbers.

"We'll be reviewing all operations across the business," Ms Gosal said.

The bank is initially targeting reductions in head office, contracting and IT roles, and she confirmed more IT jobs would be cut.

"There will be a decrease over the course of the year but we've got no targets."

Westpac's review comes a day after ANZ Bank informed 131 employees in Victoria their jobs would go.

Several hundred more jobs will be shed from the Melbourne-based lender in the next six months, ANZ's chief of Australian operations Phil Chronican said last Friday.

Analysts at Bell Potter Securities and UBS suggested the major and regional banks could slash up to 7,000 jobs over the next two years to cut costs and improve profitability, with most jobs disappearing through natural attrition.

Natural attrition rates across the banks were around 10 to 15 per cent in 2011, but the Finance Sector Union (FSU) said turnover in bank call centres was closer to 30 per cent.

"While natural attrition is an aide, you can't get to the numbers (the analysts are) talking about through natural attrition because it doesn't occur in the areas where (the banks would) happily not backfill (roles)," FSU national secretary Leon Carter said.

Westpac's shares fell nine cents to $20.57.

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