Jenee Tibshraeny: NZ Herald Wellington business editor on the Reserve Bank looking to cut 20 percent of staff

The Reserve Bank is moving to cut 20 percent of its staff in a bid to unwind the hiring spree by former Governor Adrian Orr.

The restructure will see the net reduction on 142 roles, including 35 vacant positions.

NZ Herald Wellington business editor Jenee Tibshraeny explains further.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Here the dupless. The Reserve Bank is cutting twenty percent
of its staff in a bid to unwind a massive
hiring spree by Adrian Or. The restructure that is proposed
would see a net reduction of one hundred and forty
two roles. That includes thirty five that are already vacant.
Jane chip Trainey is The Herald's Wellington business edit down
with us right now, Hey, Jana, hey, heather sounds like
a big cut, but actually when you go back to

(00:21):
what they were hiring, where they were at what six
or seven years ago, not really is it?

Speaker 2 (00:26):
Yeah? Exactly. So the proposal at the Reserve Bank at
the moment is to cut one hundred and forty two roles.
That would come on top of fifteen roles being cut
early in the year. Those were sort of leadership roles. Now,
if that all goes ahead, that would only take staffing
levels back to what they were in twenty twenty three.
God so yeah, So in January this year there were

(00:50):
six hundred and sixty staff at the bank and the
cuts proposed would take it back to twenty twenty three.
So Adrian Or definitely did go on a hiring or
the people around him towards the end of his time
at the bank. You know, I don't want to get
two in the weeds. But basically, the Reserve Bank did

(01:11):
do a big spend up in twenty twenty four because
it collected up money that it hadn't spent in previous years.
Like it gets an envelope of funding from the government
five envelope. It collected up it's underspends in previous years
and then spent it all in twenty twenty four. And
that's the year that there was really that spike in staffing,

(01:31):
so that that was controversial and that Nikola Willis has
since come out and said, no, Breserve Bank, you can't
do that again. You have to spend the money every year.
But that's where the funding came from for that big jump.

Speaker 1 (01:43):
Do we have any idea what kind of roles they cutting?

Speaker 2 (01:46):
Well, the Reserve Bank has been typically you know, not
particularly forthcoming with information, but it has said that it'll
been enterprise services and operations. So it seems like that
is that isn't you know, it's not the economics team,
it's not the team that regulates the banks and insurers,

(02:07):
but it's more like strategy stakeholder engagement, risk, compliance, governance,
general council, people and culture, technology, finance, finance and data.
So it sounds like those are the areas that will
suffer the deepest cuts. Whereas you know, economics, money and cash,
crudential policy, that type of thing won't be hit as hard.

Speaker 1 (02:28):
Can I talked about ASB they announced their results today.
What is that thirty three million dollars that they've set
aside for possible payouts?

Speaker 2 (02:36):
Good question, and the ASB CEO, Victoria Shorts, she wouldn't
tell me that today, so she said it was quite normal.
You know, if the bank sees that there's been a breach,
it will go to the regulators, or the regulators will
come to it and they'll they'll work together and then
the bank will put money aside to potentially compensate customers

(02:57):
for that breach. Now we don't know what that is,
don't know if it's one breach or several breaches, but
thirty three million Australian dollars that the bank has put
aside is pretty material in the scheme of ASB. So
presumably in time we'll find out what that's for and
find out what ASB has done wrong.

Speaker 1 (03:16):
Interesting. Hey, thanks very much you know. Janetibs Trainy, the
Herald's Wellington Business editor. For more from Heather Duplessy Allen Drive,
listen live to News talks 'b from four pm weekdays,
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