A meeting with the staffs at the bank's lending services centre in Auckland and customer transaction service centre in Wellington took place on Tuesday, which according to NZPA report is the beginning of a two-week consultation period over the outsourcing of the work to India.

Meanwhile, Finance workers union Finsec accused the Australian-owned bank of being greedy and a bad corporate citizen. The work will be done in India at a quarter of the cost, the report said.

The bank disputed the union's claim of job losses when the story first broke, saying that the back office workers would be offered the chance to work in bank branches, report said.

"About 403 workers were told that there would be 165 positions in the future, meaning 238 people would either be redeployed or made redundant," said Finsec campaigns director Andrew Campbell.

The plan is still a proposal while consultation continues. The union has no idea how many workers will accept an offer of redeployment.

One group of workers had been told they would be paid redundancy because the bank had acknowledged it would not be able to find them a comparable role.

These were people who worked late in the evening. Campbell said the bank could easily afford to employ a New Zealand workforce. The changes were designed to help it meet a stated goal of doubling profit in five years.