Bendigo and Adelaide Bank's full year profit presentation highlighted the choices open to smaller banks that lack the reach and price leadership of their larger competitors. The bank left its final dividend unchanged, at 30 cents, meaning the bank will have paid the same dividend for five half-year periods in a row.In contrast, the major banks have consistently lifted their dividends while, at the same time, griping about the additional capital buffers they need to build to meet post-GFC capital targets.Yesterday, Bendigo reported a full year profit of A$195 million, down by almost half, thanks mainly to the write-off (announced eight months ago) of $95 million in goodwill on its margin-lending business.Even allowing for the goodwill write-down, and other one-off items, the bank's cash earnings for the full year fell four per cent, to $323 million. Over the second half, cash earnings increased by one per cent, to $163 million.Mike Hirst, managing director of Bendigo, told a briefing yesterday that the bank's full year profit was "very much in line with other results that we've seen from banks... It's a low growth environment, [and] the focus has been around maintaining margin and cost management."Hirst said: "We don't really see any reason why we shouldn't be able to continue to return a reasonable result, but the uncertainty that's around the market makes it difficult to provide any guidance around that.""The board and management spend a hell of a lot of time making sure that we're balancing the equity in this business for all the stakeholders.One group of stakeholders whose interests will be "balanced" are investors in the community bank franchises of Bendigo.The bank has already reduced the commission paid to community banks and there will be a "further adjustment to that margin share in April" next year, Hirst said.This will be consistent with negotiations over the last two years with these franchise owners, who operate more than half of the bank's branch network.Hirst said the bank advised its franchisees last year that there would be "a two-year transition period to a 50/50 margin share based on funds' transfer pricing.""Now, the implicit understanding in that was that the market would've returned to some sort of normality… Now, with TDs being where they are, that hasn't happened."Bendigo's flexibility to manage its margins more widely is constrained.Hirst pointed to the aggressive pricing of Westpac's "pseudo regional" bank brands on deposits as being one factor.He also said the bank made no assumptions about asset re-pricing (or "out of cycle" changes) to interest rates on loans.