(21 September 2004 – New Zealand) Westpac is considering moving back office jobs from Australia to New Zealand to take advantage of the lower wages in that country, according to reports.The bank could move some of its product development and card processing activities to New Zealand in a bid to reduce the A$1.6 billion it spends on business technology and services each year.
The Reserve Bank of New Zealand has been concerned that New Zealand banks owned by Australian banks were being undermined by management reporting directly to head office in Sydney or Melbourne.
Governor Allan Bollard has been demanding that Australian owned banks are run as autonomous operations.
Westpac runs a branch style bank and has presented the Central Bank with a proposal to allow it to continue running its New Zealand operations in this way. The bank said the possible move of back office jobs across the Tasman was a financial rather than regularity decision.
In further news, Westpac is holding its annual general meeting in New Zealand for the first time. The bank said the decision to move the AGM from Australia reflected the board’s commitment to move the event out of Sydney periodically.
The bank has 30,000 NZ Class shareholders, and 7000 shareholders in New Zealand.