Bendigo and Adelaide Bank appoints chair

Non-major bank Bendigo and Adelaide Bank’s board of directors has confirmed Vicki Carter as the bank’s permanent chair following her appointment as interim chair on 17 April 2024.

Carter first joined the lender’s board in September 2018 and carries over 30 years of experience in the financial services and telecommunications sectors that included working for major bank NAB and Telstra.

Additionally, Carter is a non-executive director at ASX Limited and IPH Limited.

In the non-major lender’s ASX announcement, it said that Carter’s skills in large-scale people leadership, product and sales management, transformation delivery, and risk management have been “valuable and contemporary contributions to the board and the bank”.

Carter has taken over the role of chair following David Foster stepping down from the position. Bendigo and Adelaide Bank said that Foster remains on a leave of absence.

Economist update

Along with the announcement of Carter as the bank’s chair, Bendigo and Adelaide Bank’s chief economist David Robertson has said that the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) will likely remain on hold until 2025 due to persistently high inflation and strong jobs data.

Robertson said: “While the RBA kept rates on hold again in May as expected, markets have been rethinking their timeline for when the easing cycle might start and had even started to partially price in another hike.

“Our view for over a year has been that RBA rate cuts will start in 2025 to help support the slowing economy, but not in 2024 because of how difficult it is to eradicate inflation.

“With the market now coming to the same conclusion, the first cut is now predicted for early to mid-2025. While the possibility of another hike is always there, and similarly the US [is] also taking longer to start their easing cycle, we still favour no move up or down from the RBA this year.”

Bendigo Bank broker partners with two aggregators

In early April, Bendigo Bank Broker was welcomed to the lender panel of Specialist Finance Group (SFG) and outsource Financial.

The lender said the partnerships have allowed more than 1,000 brokers to offer Bendigo Bank products to their customers.

Bendigo Bank loans became available to all Adelaide Bank accredited SFG brokers on 26 March, while outsource Financial’s three stages of progressive onboarding started on 2 April for Adelaide Bank accredited brokers.

[RELATED: Bendigo Bank pulls back on Elders and Homesafe investments]

Adrian Suljanovic is a journalist at Broker Daily with more than two years experience reporting on all facets of the third party distribution channel.

Adrian has written for a range of business and finance titles including IFA, Investor Daily and Lawyer’s Weekly before joining the mortgages team in 2022.

He graduated from the University of Wollongong in 2021 gaining a Bachelor of Communication & Media with a major in Digital & Social Media.

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