The issues that will hang over this year’s bank boss grilling

3 hours ago 3

Opinion

November 17, 2025 — 2.58pm

It’s that time when the big four bank bosses set off on their annual pilgrimage to Canberra to line up on a spit for grilling by a bunch of politicians eager to flex their muscle under the guise of holding them accountable.

In years gone by, it had a gladiatorial flare – bank bosses whose organisations had misbehaved were chased by legislator lions eager to exact public shaming.

Banks that have been in the news for all the wrong reasons for mistreatment of customers must be prepared for the worst. This year, ANZ, which has announced it is slashing its workforce by 8 per cent and has also been penalised for poor conduct across its institutional and retail divisions, will probably be placed under the House of Representatives economics committee’s blowtorch.

Westpac has gamed its appearance before the committee this year particularly well with an announcement that it is piloting a program to address the absence of branches in many regional areas. The plan is to have a roaming bank operative that will set up an office in a local council for perhaps one day a fortnight. It has also extended its moratorium on rural bank branch closures to 2030 – two-and-a-half years longer than the other major banks.

The bosses of the big four banks will appear before the banking inquiry over Tuesday and Wednesday this week.

(This is not to suggest that the regional plan was motivated by the annual banking grilling in Canberra – just the timing.)

The bank’s public relations wizardry hit the bullseye when it received glowing support from Treasurer Jim Chalmers, who encouraged other banks to follow Westpac’s lead.

It takes the sting out of what is inevitably a barrage of unpleasant questions to bank bosses about their treatment of regional customers and the long-term reduction of bank branches across their networks.

Such a move might also head off more draconian moves that had been contemplated by the government – including enforcing a longer moratorium on regional bank closures or the imposition of an industry levy to support regional banking services.

A moveable herd of bankers to roam regional areas looks like a fairly cheap solution, and one would have to think that others will imitate it.

This part-time provision of services has worked for years for circuit judges and for medical specialists that visit regional centres.

Banks in regional areas where there is no branch provide transactional services though the post office, but this does not cater to customers who require more particular support.

For the most part, customers increasingly deal with their bank digitally, so retaining expensive bank branches that are largely white elephants is an expense the industry would love to avoid.

The brilliance of the move by Westpac’s Anthony Miller is that it could pave the way to eventually cull rural branches further.

Meanwhile, the annual public hearings chaired by Ed Husic will probably take on a technology hue, with questions about the roll-out of AI and how it will impact staff levels in Australia’s major banks, who are some of the biggest employers in the country.

Labor MP Ed Husic is chairing the economics committee’s banking inquiry.

“With banks increasingly deploying artificial intelligence and emerging technologies to transform and support their operations, the Committee has – for the first time – made these areas a specific focus within the review’s terms of reference,” Husic said.

To date, there has been little evidence of meaningful bank job losses associated with AI. The Commonwealth Bank’s chief executive Matt Comyn famously botched his experiment this year with replacing some staff with chatbots. It backfired badly and was abandoned.

The 3500 staff cull recently announced by ANZ’s new chief executive, Nuno Matos, made no mention of AI; rather it was a more ordinary cost-cutting exercise.

The banks will more likely highlight how AI is being employed to detect scams and monitor customer fraud events.

The annual appearance in Canberra is a performance test for the bank bosses to navigate – unpleasant as it may be.

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