YESTERDAY'S merger vote by eligible borrowers and savers at Newcastle Permanent the Greater Bank has been rightly described as an historic step for both institutions - local champions who at the same time know that treading water is no option in an age when the digital revolution is changing the very face of finance.
The Hunter has something of a reputation for resisting change, but it's fair to say this merger of two former rivals has gone remarkably smoothly.
To start with, only a minority of account holders were concerned enough with the proposal to vote, and of those who did, almost 90 per cent, on yesterday's interim count, were in favour.
This might be partly apathy but it could just as easily be customer confidence in the management of the two institutions, and the proposal they have put to their members - a plan already well examined by APRA and the ACCC, and given a tick by Treasurer Jim Chalmers.
The tie-up stands in stark contrast to the debate that raged when health fund NIB convinced its members to allow it to end its days as a mutual fund, and to join the for-profit brigade on the stock market.
For one thing, the boards of both building societies make no bones about staying a mutual. Additionally, the decision to adopt a "multi-brand" approach that allows each arm of the combined business to operate its own shopfronts minimises the change as far as customers concerned.
Legally, however, they will be very much one business, and the need to pursue efficiencies wherever possible means there will be no guarantees once the two-year "no forced redundancies" promise runs its course, on an anticipated date of March 1, 2025.
Change will come. There can be no doubt about that.
But in the same way that both institutions say there are no plans to demutualise, they also see their more intensive branch structures as a strength - a point of differentiation from the Big Four banks.
The Perm and the Greater have played long-standing and vitally important roles in the development of the Hunter, and their coming together will surely strengthen them at a time of growing financial uncertainty.
On its combined balance sheet, and in the community, the new combined entity should carry more weight - and do more for the region - than the sum of its parts.
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