ABA CEO interview with ABC Statewide Drive’s Jane Nield on regional banking

E&OE
Radio Interview
Interview ABC Statewide Drive Victoria
9 October 2026

Topics: Regional banking

Jane Nield: Well, do you still have a bank branch in your local area? If you’re one of the more than 600 regional locations nationwide that have lost a bank in the last few years, did it have a big impact? So often, it is the closing of the local bank branch that seems to speed up the demise of a regional hub, with other businesses and services following suit. Yesterday, the Australian Banking Association hit the media trail hard with a proposal to create a ‘bank in a box’ model to roll out to 10 regional locations, so that major banks are able to share resources. So, what would the plan involve, and would it ensure that you get the one-on-one personal banking services that you might be missing now? I’d love to hear about whether or not you do have a bank in your town. Give us a call. Simon Birmingham was the former federal finance minister in the Morrison Liberal government and is now the chief executive of the Australian Banking Association. Good afternoon to you, Simon. Thanks for joining us.

Simon Birmingham: Good afternoon, Jane, and good afternoon to your listeners.

Jane Nield: What is this proposal? Are we calling it a ‘bank in a box’, Simon?

Simon Birmingham: No, that is just one particular way it might be delivered. But what we’ve done is we’ve asked the ACCC for some approval, because for banks to cooperate and work together, it actually requires the competition regulator to say yes on these particular things, ‘you can work together.’ So, we’ve asked the ACCC for an authorisation for banks to work together on a few things. One is to frame some regional service commitments. How is it looking in the years ahead that banks will guarantee service and availability to regional Australians? Obviously, that has been done in some ways through the branch closure moratoriums that the major banks have had, which stretch out for some of them for a number of years to come. We’re also asking for permission to trial up to 10 banking hubs that would be shared locations for banking products and services to be accessed by customers across a number of banks, not just one. Then, lastly, for us to develop our own funding models for how we deliver that sort of shared infrastructure between the banks.

So, they’re the few things. The ‘bank in a box’ is one way a hub might be quickly delivered in that trial phase, using essentially some emergency infrastructure that banks take out in natural disaster locations. But it could equally be that we actually set those hubs up in an existing building in a town, or indeed we’re looking at partner models where we might use councils, libraries, or Australia Post outlets as partners for the delivery of those hubs. It’s up to 10 sites, and when we’ve got the authorisation, we can work through those details. Critically, we’re looking at sites only where there is not a current bank branch, so they really will be providing additional benefit and service to those communities.

Jane Nield: So, I was kind of imagining like, the local food court at the local mall or something. You walk into a room and you can kind of choose between the sushi, the Asian takeaway, or the burger joint. So that wouldn’t necessarily be the model, Simon Birmingham?

Simon Birmingham: Not in the sense if people envisaging that you’re going to walk in and you’re doing to see an assortment of tables lined up, each of them with a different bank brand hanging over the top of the table. What we would be looking at instead, for those that may operate as a standalone site, it’ll look and feel a bit like a bank branch, it just won’t have the branding of any particular bank front and centre, because it’ll be a shared piece of infrastructure. You walk in, there will be ATMs that can take deposits as well as withdrawals. There may well be coin machines that can enable small businesses to do their banking. But most importantly, there will be a real live human being, a person able to help use those pieces of technology or resolve some of those other issues that people occasionally need branches for.

Now, the way we bank has changed phenomenally in recent years, 99% of bank interactions all happen digitally now. In terms of in-branches across regional Australia, the number of interactions that branches have happening in person has plummeted by more than 60%. But there are still times for many of us, and particularly for some individuals in more vulnerable circumstances, where they want that face-to-face support. Even if a problem can be resolved digitally, they want that face-to-face support to help do that, to step them through it, to give them confidence. That’s why we’re trying to come up with these in-person solutions to do so.

Jane Nield: I’m speaking with Simon Birmingham, the chief executive of the Australian Banking Association, on ABC Statewide Drive. Simon, we hear from our listeners, especially those older Australians, who look, they might be online, but they might be also sceptical. We get hammered with information about keeping our finances safe and not falling for scams and online tricksters. If you’re saying that it wouldn’t be like, ‘there’s NAB, there’s Bendigo Bank, there’s Westpac’, how would a data-sharing model work if there are one or two tellers there, a person you can speak to in the flesh? Would they then need to be able to access multiple banking platforms to actually help someone out in person?

Simon Birmingham: Yeah, so they won’t be tooled up like a teller for a particular bank in that sense, but they will absolutely be able to do a few different things – use the technology that exists there to access multiple different bank systems, as ATMs already can and do. They’ll be able to help with some practical things like ID documentation, etc. They’ll be able to use the type of internet banking platforms that banks have and help customers resolve that using those platforms, which of course are publicly available from all of our laptops and devices. But indeed, for those vulnerable customers, they often might need somebody to help them do it, to step them through it, to almost do it for them, and they’ll be able to use that type of technology. In the end, if it’s also an issue that that employee who is not of any one particular bank can’t resolve, they’ll also be able to set a customer up in a private space with a direct connection through to their bank, and have a banker from their bank help to resolve the issue, without them sitting on the phone using those other services but actually have that real live person do the connection and make it happen in that banking hub.

So that’s the intent. Now, these are trials. It’s a model that we can see has existed in New Zealand for a little while, and exists at a bit of a bigger scale in the United Kingdom. So, we want to see whether we can find the right way for it to work in Australia if it does. But also, it is not intended to replace what overwhelmingly will continue to be banks looking to deliver their own products and services through their own proprietary-branded channels, which will remain the main way that overwhelmingly Australians do so. The regional service commitments piece that we want to develop with the banks will be about really being clear as to how they are going to continue to do that, and to make that the priority for the way most of their regional customers access their services.

Jane Nield: Simon Birmingham, you’ve mentioned that there could be collaborations with community hubs, libraries, and Australia Post outlets. I mean, Australia Post is already under scrutiny by a Senate inquiry after a leaked business case in June indicated it allegedly had plans to close dozens of licensed post offices in New South Wales and Victoria. Is there problems potentially ahead if Australia Post is too much relied on for these locations? What if they decide to pull the pin in regional areas as well?

Simon Birmingham: Across Australia, there are nearly 2,000 – a little over 1,800 at least Bank@Post outlets in regional Australia, and there are commercial contractual terms that banks have with Australia Post for those current Bank@Post services to be delivered. So, they’re a really important partner as it is, providing particularly basic cash transactions and access to those. What we’re keen to test is: possibly in these locations where there isn’t access to a bank branch, could that go a little further and provide the type of services I was talking about before, and could those local post offices be valued partners? Ultimately, it’s for Post to determine its footprint and its service offering. But I guess what we would see here is, if it works, that Post is a good delivery partner for this, and that it can do a bit more above and beyond the current Bank@Post model targeted into those communities that don’t have a bank branch – well, that will make those post offices and those locations presumably even more viable to Australia Post and the local licensee, because they are having the opportunity to provide more services and do more work.

Jane Nield: Does that not just push though some of the weight of this back onto small businesses? A lot of those Australia Post outlets, especially in smaller communities, are family-run small businesses.

Simon Birmingham: Well, banks pay for these services. They pay for Bank@Post as it currently operates, they hand over large and increasing sums of money for that. And of course, if we were looking to provide a hub in an Australia Post location, then that would well and truly be being paid for. From very early discussions that we’ve had around concepts and ideas for the future, I think some of those small businesses, those licensed post offices, would actually find the idea quite appealing and attractive, as they are often looking at ways to further diversify their income source and find ways to bring more customers into their businesses.

Jane Nield: Could you guarantee regional Victorians that if you’re looking at 10 of these potential outlets, regional Victoria won’t be overlooked?

Simon Birmingham: Look, it’s certainly our desire to make sure we get a geographical spread across the country, and I know there’s some interest in Victoria. I’ve certainly had regional MPs like Anne Webster in touch already. They are always on the front foot. The way we’re going to look at this is a combination of, firstly, not having a bank branch in a local town, but then beyond that, we’ll be assessing a range of things: the population size, the distance to the nearest bank branch, but also things like the level of local economic activity. As I said before, serving local small businesses is an important part of what these hubs could do, as well as questions of any vulnerability, the age profile of communities, and potentially looking at some areas in the country in relation to Indigenous populations as well. So, there’ll be a lot of factors there. But a geographical spread for a good test is important to us, and I think that means we would ideally be wanting to see most states play a role in the trial.

Jane Nield: Well, I’d love to hear from our regional Victorian listeners. Does this idea, this proposal for shared resourcing for regional bank services, cut the mustard for you? Give us a call. Simon Birmingham, thank you so much for your time. Look, before I let you go, a question without notice. I’ve actually sold a house. It’s the first weekend that I am rolling into in many years where I haven’t had a massive jobs list, a to-do list, the mowing, the slashing, the blackberry spraying. What’s on the agenda for you, Simon Birmingham, or are you cashed up enough to have a gardener and perhaps a mowing man, and someone to do all the jobs for you?

Simon Birmingham: Well, it was a long weekend in my home state of South Australia last weekend, so my back, I think, is still recovering from the trailer loads of mulch and the other tasks that were very definitely a case of doing my own gardening and getting those things done. But this weekend I actually have a dad-and-daughter camp with my 15-year-old daughter and a few other dads and 15-year-old girls. So, not sure how much sleep will be had, but it should be a bit of fun.

Jane Nield: So, the to-do list is on hold but love the idea that you’re spending time with your teenage daughter, Simon Birmingham. Thank you so much for your time on Statewide Drive.

Simon Birmingham: Pleasure. All good, anytime.

Ends