Pooling of capability has taken a new turn in the mutual bank sector, with P&N Bank soon to white label the People's Choice Credit Union website.Paul Gabb, the chair of P&N Bank, wrote in the bank's 2015 annual report that "the leadership group will now shift attention to identifying opportunities that create scalability and growth. "A number of partnership opportunities are under consideration that have the potential to result in a sharing of knowledge, technology and platforms to deliver significant and important economies of scale."Selina Duncalf, P&N's general manager for strategy and acting chief executive, clarified this for Banking Day on Friday."Being a small, customer-owned bank we can't keep up with everything," she said of her Perth-based, A$3 billion mutual ADI.
"We're partnering with People's Choice to take a white label version of their website. It will launch in a few weeks."This way we get shared costs and shared investment." she said.This project slots right in with priorities under P&N's now one year old five year plan."The first horizon focuses on building core capability, systems and processes."Duncalf did not want to be drawn on other examples, as "some we are still working through."Net profit at P&N Bank lifted 14 per cent to $9.3 million over the year to June 2015. Deposit growth was four per cent and asset growth five per cent."A prudent approach to a pre GFC finance facility" raised the bad debt charge to $2.3 million from $1.8 million.Credit quality mainly picked up, with bad debts written off during the year down to $1.6 million from $2.8 million. Losses on home loans were only $97,000, close to one third of the level in 2014.    Capital levels decreased by 0.9 percentage points to 16.1 per cent overthe year.P&N needs to tie down members more tightly to its services through the website revamp, one reason being it plans to be more transparent on reporting customer numbers."Our membership grew by one per cent to 104,000," Gabb wrote in the annual report. This count is set to fall, since "commencing in 2015/2016, we will move to change our membership definitions so that we only report on those members who have an active product relationship with the bank," Gabb said.Asked if there was any hint from Gabb of an alignment with a marketplace lender - as G&C Bank, for instance, have done - Duncalf said that was "something we continue to monitor. Nothing is underway at the moment."Then asked about P&N scouting for merger candidates, she said: "I wouldn't say there are any on our radar."Duncalf joined P&N Bank a year ago, hopping across from HBF. She joins another newcomer in CEO Andrew Hadley, himself the most recent strategy lead at Credit Union Australia.