Bendigo and Adelaide Bank to cut jobs after striking new multimillion-dollar partnership deals

Bendigo and Adelaide Bank will slash its workforce after agreeing to two technology deals that will save $65 million.

The bank on Thursday announced a “strategic” partnerships with Infosys and Genpact to be “more efficient”.

In a statement, the company said: “The process and operational improvements expected to be delivered by these partnerships will lead to workforce changes, impacting people in our technology and business operations teams.”

But the statement to the ASX failed to reveal how may jobs will be lost and how many staff members this will affect. The Finance Sector Union said it anticipated it could be hundreds.

Chief executive Richard Fennell acknowledged the announcement would lead to a “challenging time for our people, and we are committed to lead these changes with care and respect”.

“Decisions that impact our people are never easy,” he said.

The partnership with the two firms is estimated to cost between $85m and $95m this financial year, and is designed to “provide access to global capabilities, software engineering and AI talent to deliver greater capacity to innovate”, according to Bendigo.

Their second partnership is a six-year business operations with Genpact, an agentic and advanced technology solutions company to “bring deep expertise in process optimisation and delivery”.

The bank hopes this partnership will “drive greater productivity and support stronger risk management”.

Bendigo and Adelaide Bank is one of many companies where technological change brought by artificial intelligence is leading to job losses.

In 2025, the bank joined NAB, Bank of Queensland and ANZ in announcing staff redundancies, with it axing 145 technology jobs impacting 637 workers.

The trend moves beyond banks with leading software companies, Atlassian and WiseTech Global, also slashing jobs in 2026. In March, Atlassian chief executive Mike Cannon-Brookes said AI had influenced the “number of roles required in certain areas” with more than 1600 Australian staff made redundant.

The union has demanded the latest Bendigo Bank decision be immediately reversed.

“We are now seeing in real time the disastrous consequences of a complete lack of AI regulation, and Australian workers are paying the ultimate price,” national secretary Julia Angrisano said.

“The idea of Bendigo Bank being a community bank is now dead. It has completely abandoned any pretence of being Australia’s most trusted bank,” she said.

“The fact that Bendigo Bank cannot say how many jobs will be impacted inspires zero confidence that management understands the full ramifications of what they are doing.”