After bringing aboard former Google Australia CEO Maile Carnegie as its digital banking chief, the ANZ Bank is reportedly preparing to take a hefty axe to its technology departments.

The bank plans to cut current bureaucracy and institutional hierarchies and instead create smaller multidisciplinary teams able to respond speedily to competitive threats, according to a Fairfax report.

Language appears to be important. Christian Venter, the ANZ’s GM of technology and digital banking, has said the bank plans to use “agile” teams and “tribes”, each of about 10 people, in a bid to make the bank more adaptable to what Venter describes as disruptive shifts in technology.

Staff from departments such as sales, risk, legal or technology could all end up working alongside one another, rather than being part of traditional “silos”, Venter said.

So it’s goodbye silos, hello tribe at the ANZ…