Sources indicate that the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA), a global banking and investment firm, is considering cutting more than 100 jobs from its back-office team. However, an official update on the layoff information has not been released yet.

Moreover, the Finance Sector Union, Australia on Wednesday reported that CBA is planning to cut 251 across technology, retail banking and business banking functions to reduce cost. 

The investment banking firm laid off more than 200 employees in June 2023, despite reports of net profit due to increasing interest rates and low bad debts during that period. 

Julia Angrisano, national secretary of the Financial Sector Union stated,  “CBA employees were worried the cuts would increase the workload for remaining staff, saying workers in the bank were already complaining about problems with staffing. The jobs being lost are specialists across a range of areas and it is hard to believe that the bank can afford to lose so many experienced staff at the same time that it has a significant overwork problem across the organisation.”

In December 2022, the firm recruited more than 50,000 team members globally, which amounted to US $3.5 billion in labour employment costs. 

According to a spokesperson of CBA, “As part of our focus on business improvement, we regularly review the skills we need and how we are organised. That means from time to time some roles and work can change or may no longer be required. There are no reductions to customer-facing team members who serve our customers in the branch, on the phone or online.”

The planned layoff at CBA will mainly impact mid-level management employees in various departments, including portfolio, risk analysis, product, software engineering, merchant risk, broker support, and customer outcome