He blamed training, software and his workload - the Commission found valid reasons anyway
A Westpac home finance manager with nearly 20 years' service has lost his unfair dismissal case at the Fair Work Commission.
In a decision handed down on July 17, 2026, the Commission dismissed the worker's application, finding the bank had valid reasons to end his employment and had followed a fair process.
The worker had spent almost two decades at Westpac, most recently as a home finance manager at a Sydney branch. The bank dismissed him in September 2025 after an internal investigation examined how he handled loans and customer money.
It began when the bank's monitoring team flagged his lending. The Commission found that the bank had valid reasons for dismissal across three broad areas: accepting payments of $2,000 and $7,500 from two customers in connection with loan-related activity, several responsible-lending breaches, and unauthorised use of WhatsApp on his work phone.
On the payments, the Commission found on the balance of probabilities that he had accepted the money - the $7,500 paid into a company he owned - without declaring any conflict of interest. The worker denied wrongdoing. He said the sums were for tiles his son had sold, unrelated to any bank business, and called the suggestion he had taken cash in his office "highly objectionable." But he produced no reliable evidence for the tile account, and the Commission did not accept it, finding he was "left in the position...
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