Sydney, April 25, 2026, 06:05 AEST
Commonwealth Bank of Australia is set to cut about 119 jobs, including 43 at Bankwest, in another round of reductions that has put its artificial intelligence push back under scrutiny. The Finance Sector Union said six of the roles were directly affected by automation.
The timing matters. CBA, Australia’s largest lender, is trying to show investors it can use technology to lift productivity while keeping service standards intact, even as staff, unions and customers question how far automation should go in banking.
The cuts come two months after CBA launched a A$90 million, three-year Future Workforce Program aimed at helping staff build new skills and move into roles as technology changes work across the bank. CBA said then that artificial intelligence, or software that can perform tasks that normally need human judgment, would reshape roles at an uneven pace.
A CBA spokesperson told the ABC the bank had not made a formal announcement on the 119 roles, but said it employed around 49,000 people in Australia and had grown its workforce by about 2,500 in the 2025 financial year. “Some roles are shifting, new roles are being created, and some roles are reducing,” the spokesperson said, citing finished programs, simplified work and changing skill needs. ABC News
The union took a harder line. FSU National Secretary Julia Angrisano said employees were “peering down the barrel” of more job losses and accused CBA of “hollowing out its frontline services,” including mobile lending managers who help borrowers through home-loan applications. Finance Sector Union
The FSU said a recent survey found 72% of CBA workers were worried about job security, with offshoring and the fast spread of AI cited as key sources of concern. It said 85% of Bankwest workers were dissatisfied with job security, a figure the union is using as it pushes for stronger protections in a new enterprise agreement, the workplace contract between the bank and staff.
CBA is also pressing ahead with AI in customer protection. On Friday, the bank said it had deployed an “agentic AI” system, meaning software designed to detect patterns and propose actions, to spot emerging fraud and scam activity in payments data and suggest new detection rules. It said the rules are reviewed by fraud analysts before use. CommBank
James Roberts, CBA’s executive general manager of fraud and scams, said the system was built to identify suspicious patterns, assess severity and propose new controls faster than older tools. The bank said it processes more than 20 million payments a day on average and sends more than 40,000 warning alerts to customers through its app.
CBA Chief Executive Matt Comyn has argued that the bank is trying to give staff more clarity as roles change. In February, he said the AI impact would be uneven and that CBA wanted to create “transparency and opportunity,” while moving people into roles that need judgment, critical thinking and empathy. CommBank
The competitive backdrop is tight. CBA has been gaining share in home loans, deposits and business lending, and Reuters reported in February that it was taking business banking ground from National Australia Bank and ANZ. That makes service execution more important, not less, because mortgage and business customers can still shift to rivals such as Westpac, NAB or ANZ if digital changes slow lending support.
Its shares were quoted at A$174.49 late Friday, up 0.64%, giving the bank a market value of about A$292 billion, according to Intelligent Investor data. The stock remains a heavyweight on the Australian market, but it has pulled back from its 12-month high.
The risk is plain enough: CBA may find that cutting roles and speeding up automation saves money, but weakens parts of the service model that helped it win customers in the first place. If staff pushback grows, or if automated systems need more human repair than expected, the bank could face reputational costs and slower productivity gains.
For now, CBA has earnings room to spend. Reuters reported in February that first-half cash profit rose 6% to a record A$5.45 billion, although net interest margin — the spread between what banks earn on loans and pay on deposits — slipped to 2.04% as competition intensified. Atlas Funds Management analyst Michael Haynes said the result was helped by business banking growth and strong mortgage execution.
