Westpac will cut 65 assistant manager jobs across 71 branches, the Finance Sector Union said. Under a new model, Westpac branches with 14 or more staff will continue to have an assistant manager role. James Austin, chief financial officer of Brisbane-based mortgage manager FirstMac, will join the board of WA-based Goldfields Money. FirstMac is a substantial shareholder in Goldfields through Trio C. ANZ New Zealand has announced the appointment of Telecom NZ chairman and current Financial Markets Authority board member Mark Verbiest as an independent director. It said the Reserve Bank had approved the appointment. The number and value of mortgage approvals in the first week of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand's new speed limits were broadly in line with the previous week's volumes and appeared not to show any major slowdown. Weekly mortgage approvals slowed through June, July and August, after a Reserve Bank warning it was likely to impose the speed limits, but bottomed out through late September. Wellington-based mutual The Co-operative Bank opened a new Auckland branch in Newmarket this week and detailed plans to open two more in New Zealand's biggest city later in October. Chief executive Bruce McLachlan said it planned to have nine branches in Auckland by the end of the year, as part of a nationwide expansion to 34 branches. The bank started life in Wellington, in 1928, as the Public Service Investment Society (PSIS). It was registered as a bank in 2011. The Reserve Bank of New Zealand has issued a warning that fraudsters claiming to be from the bank or the Inland Revenue Department or the Prime Minister's office were phoning people at home to ask for payments to be made via a website to the Philippines or India in exchange for tax refunds or unclaimed funds.  "These scammers are just trying to steal money. They're not genuine; they're fraudsters," a bank spokesman said.