Great Southern to launch all-in-one cloud banking platform for microbusinesses

Great Southern Bank is looking ahead to the launch of a modern microbusiness banking platform after posting a solid full-year profit of $44.5 million and growing its retail deposits by nine percent to $13 billion last financial year.

The customer-owned bank, which rebranded from Credit Union Australia two years ago, ended the financial year with 401,000 customers, up five percent from last year but down from 420,000 two years ago.

Its net profit of $44.5 million for the 12 months to June 30 was down from $70.5 million in 2021-22, but the sale of its insurance business that year boosted its bottom line.

The results were about in line with Great Southern’s average levels before COVID-19.

CEO Paul Lewis called it a good result and noted the bank’s bread and butter was serving first-time homebuyers.

In 2022-23, Great Southern supported 2.88% of all Australian first-time homebuyers, three times its overall home lending market share.

“We think it’s a great segment too — they perform slightly better actually, in terms of credit performance, in terms of delinquencies and the rest — which some people find surprising, but I don’t,” he said.

There was still demand for first-time home-buying despite rising interest rates, Lewis said.

Government schemes have helped, including one introduced by the Albanese government to support home-buying in regional areas, which is defined to include mid-sized cities such as Geelong and Newcastle.

Next on the horizon for Great Southern is the launch of a microbusiness banking platform aimed at solo traders, gig workers, contractors and small businesses with fewer than 10 employees.

The platform is being built by Sydney-based fintech Constantinople and Great Southern will be the first client bank to use its all-in-one cloud banking platform, with a launch slated in about eight weeks.

Great Southern earlier this year joined Square Peg and Airtree Ventures in participating in Constantinople’s $32 million seed round — the largest in Australian history.

“We didn’t think we could build it ourselves, so we’re partnering with someone else and we’re also investing in that company,” Lewis said.

It was tough for microbusinesses to get much attention from larger banks, but they still needed products such as cash management, lending and merchant facilities, he said.

“So that’s where we’re playing. To make that cost-effective, it’ll basically be a very modern, digital, contemporary solution,” he said.

“Constantinople, they basically built a bank in under 12 months.”

As a credit union, Great Southern’s 2022-23 profit will be returned to customers through higher interest rates. Last financial year, its most popular savings products were often among the leaders for interest rates, Lewis said.

The financial institution rebranded from Credit Union Australia in early 2021 because it had an ageing customer base and few younger Australians even knew what a credit union was.

Its new customers now average just 31 years of age and the bank’s overall customer age has dropped from the 50s into the 40s.

This article was first published by AAP.