The staff who work in the Merimbula St George bragency were informed of the closure on Monday, April 13 and are now unsure of whether they will have a job once the bragency closes.

There are different closure dates for the St George bragencies at Narooma, located in the Narooma Pharmacy on the Flat, and for the Moruya bragency as well.

Head of media relations for the St George Banking Group Fiona Macrae said St George use the term bragency to describe the banking service providers that are operated by independent contractors in small businesses, such as the ones in Merimbula, Morya and Narooma.

“The staff there are employed by (the small businesses), not St George, so we have no control over whether they will still be employed once we close the bragency,” Ms Macrae said.

“We cannot simply redeploy the staff to other areas like we could with our employees but there have been occurrences in the past where St George has hired staff from our closed bragencies to work in our other branches.”   

There is no plan to open a new branch or bragency in the area as St George will be merging its Merimbula operations with the St George branch in Bega. While the Narooma and Moruya bragencies would merge with either Batemans Bay or Bega branches.

St George’s reason for closing the Far South Coast bragencies is the same reason given to the many rural bragencies being closed and does not take into account the region’s large elderly population.

“St George is moving to update our network in the new digital and regulatory environment,” Ms Macrae said.

“Also, the needs of our customers have evolved and solutions such as digital and mobile banking have radically changed the way our customers interact with us. St George continually evaluates the location of all our services – branches and bragencies - to ensure we’re located in the right areas to best serve our customers.”

St George has said that there will still be a range of ways St George customers can do their banking in the affected towns including using the Bank@Post service at local post offices to deposit cash and cheques, make cash withdrawals and balance enquiries as well as using Westpac branches , which customers can use fee-free.

St George also said that customers will still be able to do their banking over the phone and online.