Mumbai: ANZ National Bank, one of Australia's top financial services groups, will shift up to five per cent of its processing and operational work in New Zealand to India by the end of 2009, as part of a business transformation programme.

The move, however, will not affect the bank's staff in New Zealand or Australia,  ANZ chief executive Graham Hodges said in an update to staff.

"We are proposing to move around one per cent of our New Zealand (processing and operational) work to ANZ Bangalore this calendar year, and up to five per cent by the end of 2009," Hodges said, adding, "Our goal is to redeploy all our people who may be affected by this initiative, and we are confident in achieving this goal."

"The staged shift of work over the next 18 months will also help staff, who wish to be re-deployed, find a suitable alternative role within the bank," Hodges said.

He said no staff dealing directly with customers, including contact centres, would be included.

ANZ, which started its Bangalore operations in 1989, has around 1,800 staff there now.

ANZ said the shifting processing and operational work to Bangalore would benefit customers by increasing the bank's working day to about 16 hours from eight now.

Reports quoting employee union representatives said ANZ will outsource around 500 jobs to India in order to cut costs.

Employee union spokesman Andrew Campbell also said the jobs being shifted to Bangalore were highly-paid jobs. ''ANZ national is leading a race to the bottom for cheap labour in India by proposing to send these jobs offshore," he said.