General News
24 November, 2025
All’s well that lends well: bank manager to retire
ALTHOUGH when 2025 began, Dimboola Bendigo Bank branch manager, Wayne Anderson, had not given any serious thought to retirement, more recently, he realised it was time to move on and give someone else the reins.
While he admitted it won’t quite work out to an even 20 years there (that would’ve been April next year), that was “only a number” and he was quite happy to call it a day sometime around the Christmas/New Year period.
“I’m not going to string it out just to stand on ceremony,” Wayne said.
Nevertheless, his time there might still be of high significance – he said he was “probably the longest serving manager in a community branch in Australia”, but the title was still being officially checked by the Bendigo Bank administration this week.
Not that he would allow much in the way of accolades to go just to him – from the start of the interview with the Dimboola Banner, he repeatedly spoke of all the staff at the Lloyd St in glowing terms as a team he was just one part of, and admitted any occasional absences from him didn’t make much difference.
“The place runs like a well-oiled machine,” he said.
“Somebody once told me that to be successful, you surround yourself with successful people, and I would like to think that I've done that.
“The team here are just absolutely amazing, and they make my job and always have so much easier to do.
“You can leave the place … and it all just happens.”
Before holding the position, his background was working for a major bank – but, “they’d lost the plot, they’d lost their focus on customers” – then he ran a milk bar in Horsham with his wife for about 10 years – but with a short stint in retail afterwards, where he was “pretty much bored”, his wife applied for the Bendigo Bank position online for him.
“I wasn’t overly computer savvy, and the rest is history,” Wayne said.
He said the bank’s priority on community appealed strongly to him.
“My focus is about people,” he said.
“It's about not just the team here, but also about all of our valued clients, and being able to sit down across a desk from them, and having the ability to discuss all banking products.
“We're a full bank. We do everything that majors do and we have a decision maker in the branch, being me – and my successor will have the same authority.
“So that's important to me, where we didn't lose that focus of just people being numbers.
"We welcome people all the time to come sit, chat, whatever the case may be – and thats relationship banking, which is what I left the other place for.”
His eyes lit up when asked about what stood out to him over the journey.
“Probably the best part of the job is to have the last interaction ... to say, ‘your loan’s approved, and you move into your house in 60 days',” Wayne said.
“That’s the best part of the job. We give a little gift … and all of the team are involved.
“That's what it's all about – and I get in the car to drive home to Horsham, and I just turn the radio up and have a bit of a sing-along. I'm just happy with what I've done today.”
He said even though the bank ended up being the “last bank standing” in Dimboola when the Commonwealth Bank left some years ago, he felt it would’ve been better to keep some competition – “we didn't want to monopolise the banking in town” – but nevertheless, another aspect he has enjoyed is how the bank has given back to the local community.
“We touch a lot of the community with our grants,” Wayne said.
“So there's aged care, the schools, there's the kindergarten, the playgroup, the football clubs, the hockey clubs, the rowing club, the Steampunk.
"We pledged grants and donations from babies right through to the elderly, and everybody in between.
“So that's a big buzz as well. Everybody benefits from what we actually do here.”
As for his own plans with ‘retirement’, there’s a good reason for putting that word in quotation marks.
“Probably in the initial stage, (I’ll) just take a deep breath, I think,” Wayne said.
“But I've been given an invitation to join the Community Bank Board of Management – they don't have any access to what happens at branch level … it's just facts, it's just figures.
"There's only a meeting one night per month, but there's a bit of background stuff that goes on, and I'd be happy to do attend functions and so forth, that would be OK as well, so I will probably take up that opportunity, but I'd like to take a deep breath first.
"We're looking at maybe a caravan, depending on whether my wife likes it or not, because her idea of roughing it is no mini bar in a motel!
“We could do some tripping around – I’ve got a couple of sisters in Queensland that I'd like to go and visit.
“People say I’ll play golf every day – well, no I won’t, two days a week’s plenty.
"I’ll keep up my fitness playing tennis on a regular basis.
“I'm one of those people that can't sit still for 10 seconds, so I will have to do something.”
Postscript: For the interview, Wayne was asked if he had seen the 1946 classic movie, It’s a Wonderful Life. As of the time of printing, he has not.