National Australia Bank (NAB) has announced there will be 6,000 job losses over the next three years, as it looks to invest $4.5 billion to digitally transform the bank.

The job losses will span all of the bank’s departments, according to NAB’s CEO Andrew Thorburn, while the bank is also happy to retrain those members of staff who have “got the aptitude and commitment to do some retraining”.

The bank will also be hiring 2,000 people with more digitally-focused skills, including data scientists, AI, robotics and automation experts.

Thorburn believes that branches and business centres remain an important fixture for the bank, and will be investing significantly in them, as the bank believes that face-to-face communication is crucial to a banking environment.

Speaking about the job losses, Thorburn said: “I think all big businesses – particularly incumbent businesses – the reshaping of the workforce is going to be significant. And I think it’s important we face into that and we have a clear plan and we talk with our people about it. We’re investing here to grow and drive productivity. So it’s a very good investment story, it’s a long term story. But there’s no doubt that our industry is going to have to significantly reshape our workforce and that’s what we’re facing into.

“So what we’re doing is we’re simplifying the bank. And as we simplify, we automate processes and things move to digital channels, we will need less people and as that happens we estimate that there will be 6000 less people needed in three years’ time.”

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