Many staff at Police Bank HQ in Sydney and some in Tasmania have been laid off or soon will be. How many, we are unsure.
CEO Greg McKenna yesterday said he would talk with Banking Day on the events at the bank, once he’d sorted things through with the Finance Sector Union, and that would not be in time to assist with this report.
The FSU was unable to comment either yesterday.
The shell of the old Bell Bay and Comalco credit union, being the George Town credit union, is being stripped bare.
Now trading as Bank of Heritage Isle, the northern Tasmanian battler merged into Police Bank two years ago (and needed to). The costs of managing that project and funding an indulgent new branch in one of the most expensive pieces of commercial real estate in Hobart was costing the bank.
The once pretty swish former ANZ premises at the corner of the Elizabeth Mall and Collins Street was absorbing costs, rent and labour way too close to $1 million a year. I first laid eyes on an ATM – Night and Day Bank, remember - in the wall of this building.
The thinking at the Sydney end was that the bank would win custom from coppers and their families in the south, but that niche market is the domain of MyState, the rollup of many Tasmanian credit unions, including the one I first used when new to the workforce in 1983 and the one, my mum, a teacher, depended on.
Branches at George Town and the one in Hobart are currently closed due to the pandemic and will not reopen, the Bank of Heritage Isle told its member on Friday.
The branches at Beaconsfield and Launceston “will close in the coming weeks”, the bank said, but The Examiner, the local newspaper, reports that these branches will shut as soon as Friday, leaving Beaconsfield with no physical banking services.
A nearby competitor in the streets of Launceston is the former Bass & Equitable Building Society, the bank my nanny preferred for her term deposits and my old man still uses the outfit now known as Bank of us.
"Since the announcement there's been signs of Heritage Isle's customers going to branches to close their accounts," Paul Ranson, CEO of Bank of us said yesterday.
"Our position would be to support those customers looking to have a customer-owned experience," he said.
The burden of Heritage Isle was a small piece of the cost blowout pie faced by McKenna when he walked in as Police Bank CEO six weeks ago.
Banking Day surveyed the strategic and cost challenges facing the bank in our report on McKenna’s arrival and these themes are clear in the explanation offered the Heritage Isle faithful on the island.
“This decision has been made to better align the organisation with the changed channel preference that members of the Bank and across the industry have been showing by their transactions over the past few years,” the bank said.
“It’s a trend towards tap and go and other digital channels that has been