Aussie banks on the ANZ

PERENNIAL bank basher Aussie Home Loans is to hand-over a hefty slice of its back office functions to ANZ, though it denies there will be big job losses.

Instead, most of Aussie staff affected by the hand-over have been offered positions with the bank, according to an AHL spokesman.

“Three people in the Perth office are transferring across to the bank and only one has been affected by redundancy,” he said.

ANZ will take over the national operations in the new year.

An ANZ spokesperson was unable to comment on the staffing situation at AHL.

AHL, renowned for its bank bashing and competitive rates, formed a strategic alliance with ANZ’s Origins Mortgage Management Services two-and-a-half years ago that resulted in the bank funding a large slice of AHL’s lending commitments.

While the applications, approvals and post-settlement processes associated with loans funded by ANZ Origins will be handled by the bank’s staff, the processing and administration of loans funded by AHL’s other major lender, Macquarie Securiti-sation, will remain with AHL.

Before March 1999, AHL lending commitments were exclusively funded by Macquarie Securitisation, part of Macquarie Bank. A falling out between the two companies in 1998, reportedly over AHL’s wish to expand into credit cards and other retail products, led to the end of exclusive pact when it was due for renewal the following year.

The AHL spokesman said the home lender had chosen to pass the operations to ANZ after the bank recently spent millions on upgrading its processing systems.

“For us to keep up to speed with them we would have to spend the same amount, so it makes more sense to feed into their systems than do it ourselves,” he said.

The Aussie/ANZ announcement follows a recent credit card partnership between Citibank and RAMS Home Loans.