Commonwealth Bank

Financial Context

Illustrative wage differential: if the 6,935+ reported offshore roles were instead employed in Australia at average local rates, the additional cost could be in the order of ~$589M/yr (~5.8% of reported net profit). This is an estimate based on industry averages, not company-specific data.

Would this company be profitable without offshoring?

Every dollar paid offshore leaves the Australian economy, reducing local wages, tax receipts, and economic circulation. Why it matters

Financial data: FY2025. Estimate uses avg AU employment cost of $110,000+/yr (incl. super and on-costs) vs offshore $25,000/yr (salary + on-costs). Actual figures vary by role, seniority, and location.

In Plain English

• In 2026, Commonwealth Bank was reported to have 6,935+ offshore contractors and staff.
• This represents ~13.4% when compared to its current workforce of 51,714 (illustrative comparison only, not directly reported by the company).
• 🇮🇳 6,935+ staff reported in India in Back Office, Engineering, IT.
• Known outsourcing partners include Accenture, Nutun, Infosys, Deloitte, PwC, EY, KPMG, IBM, HCL Technologies, McKinsey.
• 1,167 Australian jobs have been cut, with some occurring during periods of offshore expansion.

Based on data from public sources at the dates reported. Figures may not reflect current headcount. See sources below for full attribution.

The Story

• Correction, October 2026This page previously showed CBA with "10,000+" offshore workers, about 22.5% of a workforce given as 44,500. Both figures were wrong and a reader was right to challenge them. CBA's FY26 annual report (page 45) sets out FTE by location at 30 June 2026, with four prior years: total 51,714; Australia 37,006; New Zealand (ASB) 7,114; India 6,935; other 659. No disclosure ever supported the 10,000. The reader's second point matters just as much: CBA's non-Australian FTE comes to 14,708, but more than half of that is ASB, a retail bank serving New Zealand customers, and the rest includes people working in overseas markets, such as institutional bankers in offshore financial centres. None of that is Australian work performed offshore, and counting it would be the same mistake this site made with SEEK's Malaysian staff. Only the India figure belongs here, so India alone is what is now counted: 6,935, or 13.4% of group FTE. For what it is worth, the India trend is the part that holds up without any estimating. CBA's own table shows India going 2,854, 4,721, 5,630, 6,788, 6,935 across five years, while Australia went 38,153, 36,697, 36,572, 37,107, 37,006. [CBA 2026 Annual Report (p45)]
• October 2026CBA staff questioned the board at the annual general meeting over the new Bangalore office complex. The chairman framed it as an investment in cyber and financial crime capability, and chief executive Matt Comyn said: “We’re not planning to increase the number of employees in India, and then secondly, all of the data and systems and records remain in Australia.” [Cyber Daily]
• September 2026Scale for the year, from the AFR's survey of the sector: CBA has more than doubled its Indian workforce in the past four years, and has restructured about 1,000 roles during the year with about half that number departing the bank. The individual rounds listed on this page are components of that 1,000, so it is not counted separately. [Grafa, reporting the AFR]
• September 2026A further round, separate from July's 276. The FSU revealed more than 172 roles in CBA's New South Wales technology team would be axed, with another 232 staff redeployed and redundancies finalised by the end of November. Areas likely affected include business banking, the chief operations office, institutional banking and markets, retail banking services and support units. The union said this took CBA's cuts for the year past 1,000. FSU secretary Julia Angrisano: "These savage job cuts confirm that there will never be a profit margin big enough to satisfy Australia's richest bank." No offshore destination was named for this round; the India readvertising allegation, which CBA denied, relates to July. [Information Age (ACS)]
• July 2026CBA opened the 2026-27 financial year by proposing 176 technology and engineering redundancies, followed by about 100 more across the Chief Operations Office, Business Banking, Institutional Banking and Markets, Human Resources and Retail Banking: 276 in July, and close to 800 for the year to date on FSU figures. The union alleges "fake redundancies": at least 37 roles recently advertised at CBA India, including software, data and security engineering, carry near-identical titles to roles being cut here. CBA's Indian workforce grew from about 3,000 staff in 2022 to around 7,000 by mid-2025 while Australian headcount held near 37,000 FTE. A CBA spokesperson said "the roles currently advertised in India are separate and unrelated to the proposed changes in Australia". FSU National Secretary Julia Angrisano: "This is a bank that regularly turns billions of dollars in profit and claims to invest in skilling and developing local workers, yet continues to brutally axe local jobs in favour of offshoring for even greater profits." The FSU has lodged a formal dispute at the Fair Work Commission. First-half cash profit was $5.44 billion, up 6%. [Finance Sector Union]
• July 2026The other side of the ledger: AI began displacing CBA's offshore workers too. The bank's Microsoft-built AI messaging platform was resolving almost nine in ten customer chat conversations without an agent by May 2026, and CBA wound back its contract with Nutun, the South African outsourcer running its Johannesburg contact centre, ending hundreds of offshore chat-support roles. Staff described automation steadily taking over their tasks as the contract shrank. The platform followed the appointment of Ranil Boteju as chief AI officer in early 2026. CBA's Rachel Round said the chat platform was "wrapping up nearly nine in ten customer conversations without any agent input"; CEO Matt Comyn said transitions driven by AI "must be handled with care". No headcount was disclosed, so no layoff event is recorded here. [Human Resources Director]
• May 2026CBA's India staff reached 6,788 as at 30 June 2025, up from 2,854 in 2022. The FY26 annual report later put the figure at 6,935 (see the correction at the top of this page). [People Matters (reporting AFR)]
• April 2026CBA announced 119 more Australian job cuts (6 directly impacted by automation, 43 at Bankwest subsidiary). Mobile lending managers among the affected roles. Follows the 400+ cuts announced earlier in 2026 and a 300-role cut in February. FSU National Secretary Julia Angrisano: "CBA seems intent on hollowing out its frontline services, including mobile lending managers." An FSU survey found 72% of CBA workers and 85% of Bankwest workers reported job-security concerns. [Finance Sector Union]
• October 2025Fair Work Commission ordered CBA to improve transparency after the FSU found the bank was advertising near-identical roles in India while making 283 Australians redundant. CBA removed 30 India job ads with the same titles as roles being cut in Australia. FWC identified 2 roles being made redundant that were simultaneously being performed in India. India headcount reached 6,788, up 21% in one year and 33% over three years, while Australian jobs fell 1%. [Australian Financial Review]
• August 2025FSU forced CBA to reverse its decision to cut 45 jobs that were to be replaced by an AI chatbot. [Australian Financial Review]
• July 2025The FSU (Finance Sector Union) accused CBA of breaching its Enterprise Agreement by "hiring for the same job, at their own Indian subsidiary" after making Australian workers redundant. [Information Age]
• July 2025CBA posted half-year cash profit of $5.13 billion. [The Australia Today]
• June 2025CBA's India workforce reached 6,788, a 138% increase since 2022. Of 2,000 IT engineers hired in the preceding 12 months, 700 were in Bangalore. [The Australia Today]
• 2025CBA signed a lease for 1.4 million sq ft of office space in India via Embassy REIT, enough for 10,000+ workers. UBS analyst John Storey cited 'pressure to move jobs back onshore' as a potential risk for unexpected cost increases. [Inductus GCC Report / Economic Times]
• March-May 2025CBA cut approximately 300 Australian jobs across retail banking, business/institutional banking, and HR. 164 technology roles were cut in March alone. [The Australia Today]
• March 2022CBA moved approximately 100 technology, compliance, and service roles offshore to India. [iTnews]
• August 2019CBA poached Pankajam Sridevi, who had run ANZ's Bangalore operations (5,000 ops + 2,000 tech staff) for 12 years, to be its first Indian managing director. At the time CBA had TCS ($140M contract) and HCL Technologies ($120M contract) as major Indian vendors. Industry experts said the hire 'strongly indicated CBA was planning to expand operations in India in a similar fashion to ANZ.' [Australian Financial Review]

All facts sourced from public reporting. No editorial commentary. Click source links to verify.