ANZ's chief tells lawmakers AI job cuts could become a global crisis that needs worldwide rules

Nuno Matos, chief executive of ANZ, one of Australia's four biggest banks, told a parliamentary hearing in Canberra on Thursday that AI could set off a worldwide jobs crisis. His remedy was not a national law but international rules. AI, he said, is one of the few areas where he would back global regulation.

The request stands out because of who made it. Matos spent the same hearing urging governments to cut spending and let the private sector lead. His bank has just finished shedding thousands of roles. When a cost-cutting CEO asks for worldwide guardrails, boards and investors should note what he thinks may be coming.

He was responding to a scenario in which AI eliminates up to half of jobs. If that happens, he said, "it's not going to be in Australia, it's going to be a global crisis." He said he hoped governments would cooperate so the technology does not become a social problem at global scale, Bloomberg reported.

A warning, not a forecast

Matos was careful not to predict that outcome. Independent MP Allegra Spender asked whether AI would add jobs, cut them or leave the total unchanged. He said he could not say. Anything he offered, he added, might be wrong within six months given how fast the technology is moving.

He told the House of Representatives economics committee that none of ANZ's recent job cuts were caused by AI. He would not guarantee there would be no AI-related losses in future.

His sharper concern was control. He warned that AI has a dark side and said no bank should build it without the right controls. ANZ is building its own internal system for overseeing AI as it rolls the technology out. It already uses AI to catch fraud and find weak spots in its cyber defenses.

He also described what he called an "AI blip", a sudden AI-driven shock to the world economy, as a major risk, though he said he does not expect it. He pointed to a mix of AI investment, including the data center building boom, record government spending, inflation and high interest rates, calling it "a dangerous situation for the world."

The numbers behind the warning

The testimony came three days after ANZ reported annual results. Statutory net profit rose 23% to A$7.27 billion in the year to September. More than 3,500 roles went under the bank's ANZ 2030 turnaround plan. It booked A$902 million in savings, ahead of its A$875 million target.

In his briefing to investors on Monday, Matos called AI a critical enabler of that plan. He said AI-assisted software engineering had doubled the bank's capacity to deliver code for a new, unified customer-facing system. He also said ANZ plans to grow its frontline banker numbers by around 50% by 2030 and will launch an internal AI academy to train staff.

That is the tension investors should watch. ANZ says AI did not drive this year's cuts. Yet it credits AI with productivity gains that let it do more with fewer people. And its CEO now says AI's job effects could become big enough to need cross-border rules.

On offshoring, which unions often tie to AI-branded restructurings, Matos told lawmakers it has been standard practice for decades. He said ANZ's offshore headcount fell by 600 this year. The bank employs about 40,000 people, including up to 9,000 in India and the Philippines, according to Australian Associated Press figures.

Why it matters beyond one bank

The hearing feeds a wider Australian argument over whether companies use AI as cover for ordinary cuts. WiseTech and Atlassian have cut jobs this year citing AI, and Telstra cut roles tied to an AI venture with Accenture. Union leaders say they worry AI is being used as an excuse to move work to cheaper staff overseas. A University of Sydney business academic says companies have real incentives to engage in "AI washing", dressing up routine cost cuts as technology change.

The labor backdrop is soft. Australian unemployment is at a five-year high of 4.7%. The Reserve Bank of Australia says AI has not caused widespread job losses yet, but it sees early signs of change, including weaker job ads in the roles most exposed to AI.

A rival struck a calmer tone. Westpac chief Anthony Miller, who testified the same day, said replacing staff with AI bots is not his bank's focus. Commonwealth Bank and NAB were due before the committee on Friday. All four are shrinking: Commonwealth Bank is expected to cut about 1,000 jobs by the end of 2026, Westpac flagged 250 in October and NAB has announced 1,500.

Canberra has proposed a new regulator for the most powerful AI systems. Employment lawyers say it targets AI developers and will not directly cover most employers. That leaves the workforce question largely unregulated, which is the gap Matos wants filled at a global level.

For executives outside Australia, the lesson is about the politics of job cuts. A big-bank CEO who just cut thousands of roles is publicly calling AI's job impact both unknowable and potentially severe. That makes it harder for any company to present AI-linked cuts as a purely internal efficiency decision. Expect lawmakers, unions and shareholders to keep pressing companies to show whether a cut is really AI, really offshoring, or simply cost control.

Matos's own advice to workers was blunt: build AI skills, or risk losing your job to a colleague who has.