Bleak Employment Future in Australia’s Banking Sector

Reflecting Australia's two-speed economy, job prospects in the country's banking sector are expected to be bleak for 2012 while the resources sector has thousands of job openings and even has to take in immigrant workers to fill in the vacancies.

A report by UBS Securities said that because of too many hiring made by Aussie banks in the past 10 years, these lenders would likely shed 7,000 jobs in the next 24 months. That means one in very 25 bank workers may find themselves jobless.

Since 2002, Australian banks have added 38,000 workers bringing the total number of industry workers to 179,000. It jacked staff cost to 58 per cent of total bank expenses.

The gloomy employment scenario would be the result of cost-cutting measures to be initiated by banks as a consequence of the economic slowdown, threats of moving some jobs overseas and the return of expatriate Australian bankers from overseas.

Another finance expert pointed to the low demand for credit as another factor behind the job cuts. Future Fund Chairman David Murray, the former chief executive officer of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, also blamed regulations placed on the banking sector by the government for the need now by the lenders to address their cost structure problems.

Experts identified financial services professionals from London, Dubai, New York and Hong Kong as the most likely to return to Australia as the currency remains high and economies overseas worsen.

However, when they return to Australia these expat bankers would bring back more skills and international experience which would increase competition among locals seeking jobs in the banking sector.

One local bank which had revealed definite plans to reduce manpower is ANZ Bank which will cut 700 staff in 2012.

For other banks, there would likely be lesser openings as current workers stay put on the job. A headhunter disclosed that employees who were scouting for new jobs in the last quarter of 2011 backed off from job offers at the last minute even if they had initially accepted the new position.

"This tend is expected to persist throughout 2012 as candidates continue to seek new opportunities only to be held back by the tentative state of the global finance market," CFO World quoted George McFerran, head of Asia Pacific for eFinancialCareers.

The availability of jobs in the banking sector will depend on the career move in the first quarter of 2012 of existing and experienced bank employees. Mr McFerran said key senior employees who have been seeking greener pastures the past year would likely transfer jobs only once the year's office budgets are released.

The movement in senior appointments would be the key in opening of posts in lower levels.

"Of course, this all depends on whether these senior individuals decide to shift, or whether they too show hesitation," he added.

The other kind of shift that may take place is to move a large number of non-client facing tasks to more cost-efficient locations offshore such as India, the UBS report said. That practice has been successfully applied by other western economies in the past two decades which has caused an employment boom in English-speaking Asian nations to the detriment of workers in the industrialised nations used to high pay.

Jonathan Mott of UBS pointed out that many Australian banks have became more lax in managing their manpower since the lenders invested in growth rather than managing costs.

Chris Richardson, a partner at Deloitte Access Economics, said Sydney would likely be most affected by the job cuts since half of the financial sector businesses sector in the country are located in that city.