ANZ Shifts 110 Melbourne, 250 Bangalore Staff to French IT Firm

ANZ Bank has outsourced its IT testing and environment services to Capgemini, a French information technology firm.

The move will directly affect 110 ANZ permanent employees in Melbourne and 250 more based in Bangalore, India. The 360 workers will be offered comparable roles with Capgemini and similar benefits.

However, what would happen to the contract and casual employees of ANZ's IT department remains unknown. The deal, however, is still being finalised and subject to approval of regulators.

A bank spokesman estimated that it would take six months to implement the shift which is a part of the global outsourcing agreement for IT testing services between ANZ and the French firm.

The shift is expected to speed ANZ's technology transformation programme the bank needs for the build-up of its Asia-Pacific financial services.

"It will enable us to build world-class testing and environment management services to support change for approximately 800 applications and more than 280 projects at a pace that we cannot achieve alone," ANZ Chief Information Officer Anne Weatherston said in a statement.

With the agreement, Capgemini will take over testing performed by more than 40 external providers. Ms Weatherston disclosed that there will be more staff transfer agreements with ANZ's technology vendors in the future because the bank need to continue to access IT skills that are becoming increasingly rare to deliver major projects and other ongoing business requirements.

Previous IT consolidation moves by the bank in 2011 caused 13 senior employees to leave ANZ. One of them is former CIO of retail and Australian business, Gary Sterrenberg, who is now the technology head of the federal Department of Human Services.

The job cuts are part of the 7,000 banking positions that are expected to be shed over the next 24 months as the lenders downsize operations by axing jobs or offshoring tasks.

ANZ said in early 2012 that it would shed 1,000 jobs to cut expenses, while Westpac has axed 560 jobs this year, 150 of which were from the IT department.

However, the Australian Prudential Regulatory Authority (APRA) warned the banks in May that it would investigate their plans to outsource the jobs because of the possibility that such moves could undermine the banking system's stability.

St George Bank, which is owned by Westpac, stopped plans to outsource 200 IT jobs to IBM, although it is not clear if the move was in response to the APRA warning.