ABA CEO interview with ABC News Radio’s Sarah Morris on regional banking

E&OE
Radio Interview
Interview on ABC News Radio
8 October 2026

Topics: Regional banking

Sarah Morris: Australia’s banks are seeking permission to team up in the bush. The Australian Banking Association has asked the competition watchdog for an exemption from competition law, so that several banks can share a single physical branch in regional towns. Now, if you live regionally, you’ll have no doubt realised that bank branches are disappearing. Federal data shows they’ve fallen from about 2300 in 2017 to under 1500 last year. Obviously, many customers are moving online, but there are lots of branches closing in the bush, perhaps forcing the customers to do that. Well, let’s find out about this idea to have the banks team up in physical branches in regional towns. I’m joined now by the CEO of the Australian Banking Association, Simon Birmingham. Simon, thanks for your time.

Simon Birmingham: Good morning, Sarah. Good to be with you.

Sarah Morris: Thank you. Can you explain what a regional hub would look like? How would this plan work?

Simon Birmingham: So, what we’re seeking is approval from the ACCC to do a few things. Firstly, to develop regional service commitments that will really be how banks demonstrate that they are maintaining service offerings in regional Australia. Secondly, to trial up to 10 regional banking hubs, and also to work out how we’ll fund that sort of shared infrastructure. Now, the trial we’re asking for involves application of different methods. So, some of them could look very much like, as your intro said, a bank branch. Except rather than being branded by a particular bank, it would be a shared service centre where customers could get help with their banking needs. Wouldn’t change any of the products or services that banks offer. In the end, that competition and diversity well and truly still remains, but rather than only having access to one bank, the customer will get support for accessing services across a range of banks. But we don’t just want to trial that sort of model. We also really see the value in delivery partners, potentially like local government or Australia Post, who deliver valuable Bank@Post services already, and so we want to potentially see whether that hub model could equally be hosted or delivered by or in some of those delivery partners too.

Sarah Morris: Let’s talk about these hubs. I’m trying to get my head around what they would look like. So, would you walk in, and there’d be one or two people there to serve you, and they would just have access to all the banks’ databases, so to speak, or would you walk in and there’d be a desk with someone from Westpac, a desk with someone from NAB, a desk from Commonwealth and a desk from ANZ?

Simon Birmingham: Yeah, so there’s a little bit of having to crawl before we can walk here. Australia’s competition laws are rightly pretty tight in terms of competitors like banks collaborating on these sorts of things. So, we need the ACCC’s authorisation to really flesh out some of the details. But conceptually, what you would be likely to see is not the desk of every bank, but yes, the person or two there to provide assistance. That person may be able to help practically with things like identification documents and checks and those sorts of steps, and also to help people to access cash and coin machines that would be set up and would exist in terms of deposit and withdrawal facilities…

Sarah Morris: So, you could go and get money out of the bank? Are you saying there, you could walk up to that person, they’d be a teller, and you could hand over your card and take 100 bucks away?

Simon Birmingham: No, they wouldn’t themselves be a teller, but we would have ATM type facilities in those banks. But they would be able to give personal assistance to people who may not otherwise be comfortable using those facilities, and they can also provide that same sort of assistance in terms of helping people to navigate solutions that could be done online, but where people aren’t comfortable doing that or able to do that themselves. So, they’d really be able to provide that face-to-face assistance. Many of the things that people seek in a bank branch nowadays – and of course the number of interactions in those branches has declined by more than 60 per cent in regional Australia, but many of the services people seek in bank branches could be done using ATMs, could be done using online banking, but for a range of reasons, some people aren’t able to do that. We recognise that, and so it’s about having somebody skilled who can help a customer step through those problems. Or if that person can’t help, can set them up in perhaps a private room and facility with a video conference line connecting straight through to their bank to help solve more complex issues, so that they’ve got again a real live person providing face-to-face support to help them with the connection, with the technology to talk to another real live person to get the solution they need for their banking needs.

Sarah Morris: I’ve only got a minute and a half, so you wouldn’t be able to do things like, you know, your mortgage couldn’t be approved there, all that sort of stuff. Essentially, it’s a bit of a help desk by the sounds of things. But I’m wondering, is this another way for the banks just to cut costs? Is this a way that they could justify closing proper branches?

Simon Birmingham: We’re very clear that for this trial, these 10 sites would all only occur in locations that don’t have any bank branch at all. So, these are communities that don’t have any branch services, but instead they will get one of these hubs. So, it’ll be an additional access point for bank services around the country and increase that presence. And in reality, in terms of more complex needs like the writing of a loan and so forth, your average bank teller doesn’t write a loan across a counter nowadays either. Mobile lenders and the like do that. And again, we do envisage that some banks are quite likely to use these hubs and potentially have visiting bankers who would come and base themselves out of there to undertake those more complex needs and give that service offering to individuals.

Sarah Morris: Time is against us. I could talk about this all morning, but Simon Birmingham, thanks for being with us.

Simon Birmingham: Thanks, Sarah. My pleasure.

Sarah Morris: Thank you. Simon Birmingham there, he’s the CEO of the Australian Banking Association, proposing these ideas of regional hubs, where several banks would share a single physical branch in regional towns. Of course, still a lot to get approved before that would be allowed, including being able to change or break the competition laws in this country.

Ends