March 5, 2013
Nanango will soon become the first town in Australia to boast two community banks when Bendigo Bank opens its new branch in Drayton Street in June.
Noel Strohfeld, the chairman of South Burnett Community Enterprises Ltd, made the announcement at a meeting of approximately 60 community bank shareholders at the Nanango Golf Club tonight.
Mr Strohfeld said that since the group’s last meeting just over four weeks ago, more than $300,000 of shares had been sold to residents of Nanango, Blackbutt, Yarraman and Kingaroy to get the community bank project off the ground.
The share sales were not only sufficient to meet the new branch’s minimum target of $526,000, they had also put it just $75,000 below its full subscription of $726,000, a figure that will ensure the new branch is profitable from the day it opens its doors.
The announcement puts an end to almost six years of work by local business identities to get a Bendigo Community Bank to open in Nanango following the closure of the town’s NAB branch in February 2007.
A succession of speakers including compere Ross Towell, SBCE Secretary Dave Robison, Yarraman Community Bank Manager Anne Woodrow, SBCE Marketing Manager Jeff Connor and SBRC Councillor Barry Green congratulated Nanango residents on the way they’d “pulled together” to get the project across the line.
After an initial share offering had failed to reach its minimum target by December 10 last year, SBCE directors decided to extend the offer an additional three months to March 10.
By January 24 they were still $150,000 short of their goal.
Since that time Nanango – like the rest of the South Burnett – has been hit by three floods. But rather than dampen enthusiasm for the project, the dire situation only seems to have to have fired it up.
Anne Woodrow told the meeting that the new branch was expected to hire a minimum of four staff and would start with $9 million of written business on its books.
However, it is capable of conducting banking business at the existing Yarraman and Blackbutt branches right now if shareholders wished to do so.
Dave Robison said some structural work needed to be carried out to the bank’s new premises in Drayton Street but the major area of delay in opening the new branch was expected to come from Telstra.
The branch will need to wire up its ATM and install a phone system and computer networks which wouldn’t be an easy undertaking.
Cr Barry Green congratulated the new Bendigo Community Bank coming to the town alongside Heritage Building Society’s Nanango Community Branch, and joked that the generous donations of both organisations to the local community “were helping to make the South Burnett Regional Council’s life a lot easier”.
What he found most pleasing, though, was the fact that residents from all over the region had elected to become shareholders in the bank, and that it had taken on the mantle of being a regional project.
Bendigo Bank Senior Manager Peter Dirkx, from Brisbane, said a month ago he wasn’t sure “if tonight’s meeting would be a celebration or a wake” but he said he was very pleased with the outcome.
The new branch would be the 298th nationally and the 44th in Queensland.
“Last year these branches contributed $100 million to their communities – $10 million to Queensland – and that amount is increasing all the time as business grows,” he said.
“I take my hat off to the committee, the board and everyone else who worked to make this new branch possible.”
Jeff Connor told the audience that last year the Bank’s two existing branches had given $35,000 to 18 community groups, along with a $5000 scholarship and support to Graham House in Murgon, and he was looking forward to an expanded grants program in the future.
He said the next shareholders’ meeting probably wouldn’t be at the Golf Club.
“They’re wonderful hosts, but I think the most appropriate place for our next meeting will most likely be our new bank,” he said.
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