BNK CFO follows CEO out the door

John Kavanagh

Departing BNK CFO Jussi Nunes

BNK Banking Corp has lost its chief financial officer, less than a month after the bank’s chief executive resigned.

BNK announced yesterday that CFO Jussi Nunes will remain with the bank until September, while the board searches for a replacement.

When CEO Simon Lyons quit last month, his departure was immediate. Deputy chair Don Koch, a former head of ING Bank Australia, has stepped in as interim CEO.

It’s been a difficult few months for the Western Australian bank. In March it was forced to withdraw a rights issue.

BNK’s shares traded at 48 cents yesterday. The merger with Finsure, a mortgage aggregator, operational losses and no sign of even the beginnings of any break-out story in banking will confound the bank’s investors as much as its board, concerned at the value they can demonstrate in the ADI licence.

BBC (the ASX code for BNK Banking Corp) through its smallness and instability is a delicate investment story, messing up the part fintech, part neobank story it pushed at one point.

Jon Sutton, the former managing director of Bank of Queensland is not long on the BNK board (he joined in late 2019) and served even less time as chair.

Sutton, Banking Day hears, is schmoozing around in search of counsel and strategic options for the former Goldfields Money. Don’t read this as M&A in the wings; indded handing back the ADI licence may unfortunately feature among the options iby Sutton and his BBC board.

With A$339 million in deposits at March 2020, BNK is unloved banking small-fry. On the flipside, risk-weighted mortgages jumped by nine per cent in the March quarter alone, so Finsure brings something.