Bendigo Bank is an Australian financial institution, operating primarily in retail banking

Retail banking

Retail banking is banking in which banking institutions execute transactions directly with consumers, rather than corporations or other banks. Services offered include: savings and transactional accounts, mortgages, personal loans, debit cards, credit cards, and so forth.-Types of...

. The company merged with Adelaide Bank

Adelaide Bank

The Adelaide Bank was a publicly listed regional bank with its head office in the state of South Australia. Since 30 November 2007 it is a wholly owned subsidiary of Bendigo and Adelaide Bank and Adelaide Bank shares are no-longer quoted on the ASX...

 in November 2007, with shareholders voting in March 2008 to change the merged company’s name to Bendigo and Adelaide Bank Limited.

Before the merger, Bendigo Bank delivered its products and services through almost 900 outlets Australia-wide, including more than 160 company owned branches, 220 community owned Community Bank branches of Bendigo Bank, 100 agencies and 400 Elders

Elders Limited

Elders Limited is an Australian based agribusiness company.It was founded in 1839 in South Australia by Alexander Lang Elder as a new arm of his family's Scottish based merchant and shipping business. Its core business was a trading company and commission agent for wool and other agricultural...

 Rural Bank outlets. The bank's branches are primarily in Victoria

Victoria (Australia)

Victoria is the second most populous state in Australia. Geographically the smallest mainland state, Victoria is bordered by New South Wales, South Australia, and Tasmania on Boundary Islet to the north, west and south respectively....

 and Queensland

Queensland

Queensland is a state of Australia, occupying the north-eastern section of the mainland continent. It is bordered by the Northern Territory, South Australia and New South Wales to the west, south-west and south respectively. To the east, Queensland is bordered by the Coral Sea and Pacific Ocean...

. The merged bank now has over 400 branches, including 25 that came with the merger with Adelaide Bank. The bank's national headquarters remain in the city of Bendigo, and it has regional headquarters in Melbourne Docklands

Melbourne Docklands

Docklands is an inner city suburb in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia occupying an area extending up to 2 km west of and adjacent to Melbourne's Central Business District . Its Local Government Area is the City of Melbourne...

, Ipswich, Queensland

Ipswich, Queensland

Ipswich is a city in South-East Queensland, Australia. Situated along the Bremer River Valley approximately 40 kilometres away from the state's capital Brisbane. The suburb by the same name forms the city's Central Business District and administrative centre...

 and Adelaide

Adelaide

Adelaide is the capital city of South Australia and the fifth-largest city in Australia. Adelaide has an estimated population of more than 1.2 million...

, South Australia

South Australia

South Australia is a state of Australia in the southern central part of the country. It covers some of the most arid parts of the continent; with a total land area of , it is the fourth largest of Australia's six states and two territories.South Australia shares borders with all of the mainland...

.

Community Bank is an innovative franchise program in which the local community owns and operates a Bendigo Bank branch (which is separately incorporated) and Bendigo Bank provides all the banking infrastructure and support. The community company and Bendigo Bank share all branch revenue with whatever is left over, after the company pays its branch running costs, remaining as profit. The program was a response to the massive closure of bank branches in rural areas. Bendigo Bank has since extended the program to areas that have bank service.

History and development

The company started in 1858 as a fixed-term (terminating) building society

Building society

A building society is a financial institution owned by its members as a mutual organization. Building societies offer banking and related financial services, especially mortgage lending. These institutions are found in the United Kingdom and several other countries.The term "building society"...

 to improve conditions in the Bendigo goldfields during the Victorian gold rush

Victorian gold rush

The Victorian gold rush was a period in the history of Victoria, Australia approximately between 1851 and the late 1860s. In 10 years the Australian population nearly tripled.- Overview :During this era Victoria dominated the world's gold output...

.

At seven years old, in 1865, the company restructured, taking the name Bendigo Mutual Permanent Land and Building Society, which incorporated in Victoria 11 years afterwards. It continued to expand its holdings when, in 1978, it merged with Bendigo and Eaglehawk Star, a building society established in 1901.

Further growth involved the acquisition of the building societies Sandhurst, in 1983, and Sunraysia, in 1985, a merger with Sandhurst Trustees Ltd and the acquisition of Capital and Compass building societies.

In 1982 BBS became the first financial institution in Australia to introduce successfully both Visa credit and debit cards.

In 2002 Bendigo Bank introduced the first "Green Loans" in Australia and formed "Community Sector Banking", a banking joint venture with the not-for-profit sector.

1993 saw BBS receive a stockmarket listing. Its growth continued throughout the 90s when it acquired National Mortgage Market Corporation Limited in 1995, a mortgage-manager company focussed on loan introducers and brokers. In that year BBS converted to a bank with the name Bendigo Bank and, further, acquired Monte Paschi Australia, which it renamed Cassa Commerciale Australia in 1997.

Bendigo Bank’s "Community Bank" program began in 1998—the first branches opened in the western Victoria towns of Minyip and Rupanyup on 26 June and the first metropolitan branch in the outer eastern suburb of Upwey

Upwey, Victoria

Upwey is a suburb in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, east from Melbourne's central business district. Its Local Government Area is the Shire of Yarra Ranges and City of Knox. At the 2006 Census, Upwey had a population of 6,760.-History:...

 on 19 October.

The late 1990s saw a further development when Bendigo Bank and Elders Australia formed Elders Rural Bank, a joint venture company focused on agribusiness

Agribusiness

In agriculture, agribusiness is a generic term for the various businesses involved in food production, including farming and contract farming, seed supply, agrichemicals, farm machinery, wholesale and distribution, processing, marketing, and retail sales....

 and rural

Rural

Rural areas or the country or countryside are areas that are not urbanized, though when large areas are described, country towns and smaller cities will be included. They have a low population density, and typically much of the land is devoted to agriculture...

 Australia. Bendigo Bank was also the first financial institution to introduce a mortgage offset account, now a standard banking product in Australia.

In 1999 the bank formed an alliance involving mutual shareholding with IOOF

IOOF (company)

IOOF is an Australian financial services company specialising in investment and superannuation management. It currently manages over A$29bn of funds. It was founded in 1846 by the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, and evolved out of the Victorian Branch of the Lodge. Its head office is currently...

.

The bank received its operating licence in 2000 and absorbed the First Australian Building Society

First Australian Building Society

First Australian Building Society was a building society that operated in Queensland between 1997 and 2000.-History:The Ipswich and West Moreton Building Society, established in 1877, merged with the First Provincial Building Society on 4 November 1996....

 in Queensland, acquiring a new regional headquarters in Ipswich. That same year saw a $A75 million head office expansion in Bendigo.

Five years later Bendigo bank built a regional headquarters on Harbour Esplanade in Melbourne

Melbourne

Melbourne is the capital and most populous city in the state of Victoria, and the second most populous city in Australia. The Melbourne City Centre is the hub of the greater metropolitan area and the Census statistical division—of which "Melbourne" is the common name. As of June 2009, the greater...

, Docklands.

In 2007 Bendigo Bank rejected Bank of Queensland's merger/takeover proposal, while agreeing to merge with Adelaide Bank. The $A4 billion merger was completed on 30 November. Subsequently, shareholders voted to change the merged company’s name to Bendigo and Adelaide Bank Limited.

On 11 December 2008, Bendigo Bank's new headquarters in Bendigo was completed. The 26th Prime Minister of Australia, Kevin Rudd

Kevin Rudd

Kevin Michael Rudd is an Australian politician who was the 26th Prime Minister of Australia from 2007 to 2010. He has been Minister for Foreign Affairs since 2010...

, was present at the opening.

External links

• Bendigo Bank — Official site
• Elders Rural Bank — Official site
• Community Bank — Official site
• National Mortgage Market Corporation — Official site