Crikey

To Parramatta this morning for the official opening of the first of BankWest’s east coast branches, complete with free coffee, toys and DVDs to keep children occupied, “open teller pods”, a range of finance-type merchandise (investment books, wallets, piggy banks) and all available during standard shop hours, seven days a week in the Westfield mall. I wonder if the pens will still be chained down?

BankWest is even turning on helicopter transport to entice CBD hacks to venture past Balmain for the event. Well, it is 25kms by road.

Parramatta and Mt Druitt are the first of 160 new branches as the HBOS subsidiary takes the fight to the Big Four. There will be six more in Sydney by Christmas while Melbourne will see its first in the Bourke Street mall early next year.

Of course 160 is but a handful of five-cent pieces in the coin counting machine compared with the extensive branch networks of the cartel, but it’s certainly enough to worry them.

I suspect it is no coincidence that ANZ is running television ads about longer opening hours for a few of its branches ahead of the BankWest launch. (And with ANZ’s usual eye for a little ambush marketing, the fine print isn’t as flash as the headline – in all of greater Sydney it has just nine branches that open on Saturday and none on Sunday.)

But more important than the hours or even the “open-plan design with funky retro elements” is the products on offer, which is why last week’s announcement of BankWest’s Hero transaction account matters considerably more. ING and BankWest invigorated deposit savings accounts with their online offerings and now they might be about to do the same with transaction accounts for anyone earning more than $24,000 a year.

Just when the credit confidence crisis focused attention on the value the Big Four get from the cheap money of their depositor base, HBOS threatens to make them start paying for it.

I’m still looking for the catch – it is a bank – but the Hero account appears to be a vastly superior offer, one good enough to entice customers to change banks. It is the exact opposite of existing transaction accounts – no fees and (relatively) high interest compared with fees and no or negligible interest.

Have your salary paid into a Hero account and you receive 5 per cent on the first $5,000 and no fees. There’s no interest on amounts above that, but I guess you’re supposed to be smart enough to transfer the excess into one of their high-interest accounts and pick up 7 per cent.

No, I’m not on the BankWest payroll, or a HBOS shareholder, I’m not even taking their helicopter ride or the alternative offer of a limo, but I do like the competitive pressure being exerted on the banking system. Hopefully it will make my existing bank improve its game – or I’ll become a BankWest customer.