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Speaker 1: Here the dupless. The Reserve Bank is cutting twenty percent

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Speaker 1: of its staff in a bid to unwind a massive

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Speaker 1: hiring spree by Adrian Or. The restructure that is proposed

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Speaker 1: would see a net reduction of one hundred and forty

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Speaker 1: two roles. That includes thirty five that are already vacant.

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Speaker 1: Jane chip Trainey is The Herald's Wellington business edit down

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Speaker 1: with us right now, Hey, Jana, hey, heather sounds like

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Speaker 1: a big cut, but actually when you go back to

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Speaker 1: what they were hiring, where they were at what six

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Speaker 1: or seven years ago, not really is it?

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Speaker 2: Yeah? Exactly. So the proposal at the Reserve Bank at

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Speaker 2: the moment is to cut one hundred and forty two roles.

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Speaker 2: That would come on top of fifteen roles being cut

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Speaker 2: early in the year. Those were sort of leadership roles. Now,

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Speaker 2: if that all goes ahead, that would only take staffing

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Speaker 2: levels back to what they were in twenty twenty three.

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Speaker 2: God so yeah, So in January this year there were

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Speaker 2: six hundred and sixty staff at the bank and the

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Speaker 2: cuts proposed would take it back to twenty twenty three.

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Speaker 2: So Adrian Or definitely did go on a hiring or

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Speaker 2: the people around him towards the end of his time

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Speaker 2: at the bank. You know, I don't want to get

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Speaker 2: two in the weeds. But basically, the Reserve Bank did

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Speaker 2: do a big spend up in twenty twenty four because

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Speaker 2: it collected up money that it hadn't spent in previous years.

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Speaker 2: Like it gets an envelope of funding from the government

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Speaker 2: five envelope. It collected up it's underspends in previous years

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Speaker 2: and then spent it all in twenty twenty four. And

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Speaker 2: that's the year that there was really that spike in staffing,

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Speaker 2: so that that was controversial and that Nikola Willis has

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Speaker 2: since come out and said, no, Breserve Bank, you can't

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Speaker 2: do that again. You have to spend the money every year.

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Speaker 2: But that's where the funding came from for that big jump.

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Speaker 1: Do we have any idea what kind of roles they cutting?

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Speaker 2: Well, the Reserve Bank has been typically you know, not

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Speaker 2: particularly forthcoming with information, but it has said that it'll

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Speaker 2: been enterprise services and operations. So it seems like that

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Speaker 2: is that isn't you know, it's not the economics team,

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Speaker 2: it's not the team that regulates the banks and insurers,

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Speaker 2: but it's more like strategy stakeholder engagement, risk, compliance, governance,

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Speaker 2: general council, people and culture, technology, finance, finance and data.

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Speaker 2: So it sounds like those are the areas that will

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Speaker 2: suffer the deepest cuts. Whereas you know, economics, money and cash,

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Speaker 2: crudential policy, that type of thing won't be hit as hard.

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Speaker 1: Can I talked about ASB they announced their results today.

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Speaker 1: What is that thirty three million dollars that they've set

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Speaker 1: aside for possible payouts?

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Speaker 2: Good question, and the ASB CEO, Victoria Shorts, she wouldn't

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Speaker 2: tell me that today, so she said it was quite normal.

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Speaker 2: You know, if the bank sees that there's been a breach,

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Speaker 2: it will go to the regulators, or the regulators will

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Speaker 2: come to it and they'll they'll work together and then

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Speaker 2: the bank will put money aside to potentially compensate customers

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Speaker 2: for that breach. Now we don't know what that is,

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Speaker 2: don't know if it's one breach or several breaches, but

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Speaker 2: thirty three million Australian dollars that the bank has put

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Speaker 2: aside is pretty material in the scheme of ASB. So

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Speaker 2: presumably in time we'll find out what that's for and

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Speaker 2: find out what ASB has done wrong.

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Speaker 1: Interesting. Hey, thanks very much you know. Janetibs Trainy, the

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Speaker 1: Herald's Wellington Business editor. For more from Heather Duplessy Allen Drive,

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