The Pomona and District Chamber of Commerce (PDCC) will seek an explanation from Sunshine Coast Community Financial Services Ltd – until recently operators of four Bendigo Bank branches serving Noosa and the northern Sunshine Coast areas – about the sudden closure of its Pomona Bendigo Community Bank.
Bendigo Bank’s automatic teller machine at Pomona will be withdrawn also.
The town serving a district population of 9000 people has been left without any traditional banking service since 1 April 2022. It is a case of deja vu for local residents, forced to seek out a new bank after the last of the ‘big four’ banks, the ANZ, left town in late 2014, to be replaced by Bendigo Bank operating three days a week from premises in Station Street.
“Bendigo Bank is a member of the Chamber, so I am surprised that the PDCC did not get prior warning of Bendigo’s closure decision, nor any formal request to seek more business support,” PDCC president Phil Moran said.
“The bank was a vital component of business life, allowing retailers to bank takings overnight rather than keeping them locked in drawers and safes in backrooms of cafes and shops,” Mr Moran said.
However, he said his biggest concern was for ordinary bank customers who used to transact business at the Pomona branch, particularly older residents.
Mr Moran described mobile phone coverage in parts of the hinterland as ‘dodgy’, saying the use of a bank app for electronic banking was less than ideal for many rural residents.
“Web banking is not much use if you have an unreliable service provider and your internet keeps going down.”
“From a Chamber perspective, we fear that if people travel to places outside Pomona for their banking, they will shop in those towns and buy petrol there, further eroding a local economy that has fared fairly well during the Covid pandemic.
“In managing Covid-19, the banks remained open as an essential service because they are. We were just coming out of those times and now we are hit with this. At the very least, the town and district are owed an explanation from an organisation that says it puts ‘community’ into personal banking,” Mr Moran said.
