Westpac is quitting its money-losing financial advice business, which could result in a loss of 900 full-time positions.

Customers will get offers to to transfer to Viridian Advisory, and as many as 10,000 could go that way.  Westpac is "working through other solutions" for other financial advice customers.  Viridian is also offering to take on up to 175 people from Westpac, but officials acknowledge that hundreds more could end up being made redundant.

"While these decisions are the right decisions for our customers and for the business, there are some great, hardworking people who are affected by this," said chief executive Brian Hartzer.  "We will be working very hard to find those people other opportunities in the group," he added, "We're a large company, we have a lot of natural turnover, there's always an opportunity to try and re-plug people in."

The proceeds of the sale of the financial advice business to Viridian are yet to be determined.