The Commonwealth Bank could be set to cut up to 10,000 jobs and around $2 billion in costs according to reports, with the bank working on the plan with McKinsey.
Driven by new CEO Matt Comyn, who was appointed to the helm last year, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) is said to be mulling a plan devised in conjunction with global strategy and management firm McKinsey & Company to axe up to 10,000 local jobs – saving about $2 billion in operating costs. It continues the close relationship between the bank and the consultancy dating back for more than 15 years.
The largest employer among Australia’s Big Four banks, the potential cuts could see an almost 25 percent reduction to its approximate workforce of 44,000, the CBA’s headcount then dropping below the ~34,000-strong staff at National Bank. The plan is also reported to include the shuttering of 300 of its 1000 branches around the country, although as customers shift to online banking the closures are not unexpected.
“My understanding is that the story is good and there has been a plan underway,” said Your Money’s chief reporter Leo Shanahan of the reports which first surfaced in The Australian (Your Money was formed through a partnership between Nine and NewsCorp subsidiary Australia News Channel). With its potential ramifications for the government’s hopes in the upcoming federal election, the reporting from Murdoch’s stable provides an unexpected twist.
“Matt Comyn has been wanting to shut branches in particular for a while and cut costs at the bank. There is broadly a plan underway over the next few years for [this cost-cutting] to happen,” continued Shanahan on Comyn, who replaced former McKinsey New Zealand head and global partner Ian Narev as CEO last year following the anti-money laundering breeches which saw the bank fined a record $700 million.Comyn has since broadly criticised his predecessor at the recent Royal Commission into misconduct in the banking and financial services sector, which stemmed in part from a Four Corners report on the profit-at-all-costs culture within the CBA’s financial planning division, but the bank’s relationship with McKinsey apparently remains strong – having dated back to before Narev’s arrival and featuring other close links.
In 2003, the CBA brought in McKinsey for an ongoing “benchmarking” project to cut $500 million in costs – with 600 staff said to be in the retrenchment cross-hairs at the time following a significant reduction in the years prior. McKinsey has continued to serve the CBA in the years following, and had throughout the 80s and 90s advised all of the NAB, Westpac and the ANZ on various cost-cutting and re-organisational measures – including saving Westpac from potential collapse.
Meanwhile, CBA’s Group Executive for Retail Banking Angus Sullivan, who will be responsible for overseeing any strategy to close branches and let go customer facing staff, was like Narev a former partner in McKinsey’s New York office, spending nine years with the strategy firm before joining CBA in 2011. Former CFO Rob Jesudason is also among others a McKinsey alumnus, while the leadership team of the CBA’s strategy division continues to feature a number of ex-McKinsey consultants.
For the Commonwealth Bank’s part, it has described the reports of a mass redundancy – which The Australian contends were meant to be kept secret until after the election – as “unnecessarily alarming” and “misleading”, while reiterating the need to manage costs. McKinsey meanwhile traditionally refuses to comment on matters concerning its clients, although the firm recently committed to greater transparency following a series of its own public image issues.
The financial sector accounts for nearly a quarter of Australia’s $5 billion management consulting spend, with the Big Four professional services quartet Deloitte, PwC, KPMG and EY in recent years all scoring multi-million dollar contracts with the big Australian banks – particularly around the areas of digitisation. McKinsey, meanwhile, was last year brought in by Telstra on another $1 billion cost-cutting program.
Sourced from Consultancy.com.au