BNZ made \u201csudden\u201d cuts to a range of employee benefits<\/a>, including the removal of account fee waivers, low equity premium waivers and discounts on variable home loan rates.<\/p>\nA current employee said many workers learned about the changes from the Herald, \u201cpurely because of the lack of transparency and communication internally\u201d.<\/p>\n
The Herald understands many other employee benefits have also been slashed in recent years, including removal of the bank\u2019s pension scheme, NAB (BNZ\u2019s Australian parent company) share issues, end-of-year bonuses and even things like office stationery supplies.<\/p>\n
Workers say many of those benefits were cut to all except senior management and executives. BNZ did not respond to questions asking to confirm if this was the case.<\/p>\n
![\"BNZ]()
BNZ removed a range of employee benefits last week, shocking workers. Photo \/ Mark Mitchell<\/p>\n
The union said BNZ has made a particular effort to avoid adding many benefits to contracts, \u201cso they can just pick and choose and remove things on a whim\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s kind of the culture they have at BNZ at the moment,\u201d Francis said. \u201cThey will do what they want, and they will make people do it. <\/p>\n
\u201cAnd that\u2019s why this benefit attack and this behaviour is really concerning, because it doesn\u2019t look like it\u2019s stopping.\u201d<\/p>\n
An ex-employee described BNZ as a \u201ctoxic\u201d workplace.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am not surprised at how they are now gutting almost all staff benefits.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey have become a terrible organisation to work for. In the end, I was actually glad to be redundant, as at least I got a payout and could leave that toxic place.\u201d<\/p>\n
What benefits does BNZ offer?<\/p>\n
Asked about the removal of benefits for workers over the years, Cullum said: \u201cIn addition to the six weeks\u2019 annual leave BNZ introduced back in 2019, we also introduced improvements to our extensive range of employee benefits which remain in place today.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe changes introduced were based on feedback from our employees when we surveyed them on the types of benefits they valued the most.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cullum said these include:<\/p>\n
Free health, life and income protection insurance, with significant discounts available for upgrades or extensions for family.Variable end-of-year bonuses for many employees were replaced with salary increases (removing the uncertainty of those discretionary annual payments).A legacy retirement scheme was replaced, with BNZ retirement contributions moving to KiwiSaver (BNZers already in the previous scheme can continue to contribute to it, and many do).<\/p>\n
\u201cWe also provide flexible and hybrid working arrangements for many roles, while our executive and senior leaders are expected to be in the office five days a week to support their teams,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
\u201cBNZ also continues to make KiwiSaver employer contributions to employees over 65.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Australian-owned bank regularly posts billion-dollar statutory net profits every year, including nearly $1.5 billion in 2025.<\/p>\n
![\"Dan]()
Dan Huggins was appointed BNZ boss in 2021.<\/p>\n
Many workers have also spoken out about BNZ boss Huggins, saying he is not popular among staff. <\/p>\n
The union also confirmed that it was \u201caware that workers at BNZ have very strong feelings about Dan\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the biggest concerns we as a union have is that BNZ has behaved under Dan far more like a \u2018do as we say, not as we do\u2019 kind of culture,\u201d Francis said. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s dictated from the top down. And that\u2019s not been received well.\u201d<\/p>\n
Huggins was appointed BNZ chief executive in October 2021.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When he was challenged by an employee about how staff have \u201cworked really hard\u201d without a \u201cgreat pay…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":514562,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[4765,1643,28500,4282,138,2741,23552,3588,4484,71,305,194,12514,111,139,69,6270,1523,1527,25338,8229,18937,61,4478,19135],"class_list":["post-514561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-annual","tag-bank","tag-bnz","tag-boss","tag-business","tag-claim","tag-claimed","tag-cut","tag-employees","tag-from","tag-have","tag-kiwi","tag-leave","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-office","tag-over","tag-return","tag-slash","tag-they","tag-threatened","tag-to","tag-workers","tag-working"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=514561"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514561\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/514562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=514561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=514561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=514561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}