Branch closures? You can bank on it!
No bank and just a limited number of banking services through the Post Office may be as good as it gets for an increasing number of regional and rural communities.
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Ten months after the other Big Four banks signed in-principal agreements to join Bank@Post, ANZ has signed up to the service, which offers simple banking services to customers, such as making cash deposits and withdrawals, at a post office.
In February 2025, it was announced that the Federal Government, Australia Post, CBA, NAB, and Westpac had reached new in-principal Bank@Post agreements, and that ANZ had agreed to “key terms on which it will join the service”.
Despite that assurance, ANZ customers have had to wait nearly a year to access the post office-based banking service, while watching more bank branches close across regional and rural Australia.
The Minister for Communications, Michelle Rowland, and Assistant Treasurer, Stephen Jones, announced last year that the new agreements “will shore up the financial outlook for Bank@Post and provide greater certainty and choice to banking customers, particularly in rural and regional areas”.
However, banks continue to close branches. Regionally based bank, People First Bank, has announced it will shut 15 branches and three agency outlets across Australia. This follows 18 closures last year.
Many regional and rural customers are now forced to travel hundreds of kilometres for person-to-person banking.
Since 2017, 36% of bank branches in regional Australia have closed and the government says Bank@Post is “taking action to arrest this decline in regional banking services”.
Pinning its hopes on the project to alleviate anger at the continuing closures, the government says more than 3,400 Australia Post stores now provide banking services to customers from 70-plus participating banks and financial institutions.
ATM access has also shrunk by 47% over the same period.
Voicing community concern, in particular that of older residents, National Seniors Australia (NSA) CEO, Chris Grice, said banks should carry a “community service obligation” because they benefit from a $250,000 taxpayer-backed deposit guarantee.
“Walking away from physical branches while continuing to benefit from public guarantees is not a neutral commercial choice, it is a withdrawal of a community service,” Mr Grice said.
“Older Australians deserve better than being told to ‘go digital’ when the system itself was never designed with them in mind. Access, trust, and inclusion still matter.”
You can read Mr Grice’s opposition to the continuing closure of bank branches here.
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