Teachers Mutual Bank is one step closer to making its relationship with Australian Mutual Bank official.
On Thursday, Sydney-based Teachers Mutual revealed that member voting for the proposed merger of the two customer-owned banks will open Monday, 9 February. The results will be announced after the special general meeting on 12 March.
"The board supports this merger unanimously," Andrew Kearnan, chair of Teachers Mutual, told a packed room full of brokers, lenders and property professionals at an event Thursday evening, celebrating Teachers Mutual's new Barangaroo-located headquarters. "There's a lot of good reasons why the AMB merger makes sense."
The chairman pointed first to the broader competitive landscape, explaining that consolidation enables smaller banks to scale and remain competitive.
"There's a great cultural alignment there already for us," Kearnan added. "We've done a lot of due diligence, as have they on us. And we feel very comfortable with the risks associated with this merger. They bring a lot of capital to the equation. And good people."
In an 8 January blog post, Australian Mutual Bank Chief Executive Officer Mark Worthington endorsed the merger, making similar observations about an industry undergoing rapid change.
"Member-owned banks across Australia are facing shared challenges driven by increasing regulatory requirements and costs, rapid technological change, cybersecurity risks and the need to achieve greater economies of scale," Worthington said. "At the same time, consolidation across the sector has intensified over the past two decades. While our bank has shown strong resilience throughout this period, we must continue evolving to ensure we deliver the best possible value, protection and service to our members.
"The proposed merger is a proactive and strategic choice," Worthington continued. "The increased scale of the merged bank will enable us to enhance the quality, convenience and value of our products and services."
The two mutual banks first went public with their relationship in December 2024, signing a memorandum of understanding to explore a possible merger. The Teachers Mutual Bank board of directors endorsed the deal in May 2025.
If the two mutuals do merge, the combined entity would be one of Australia's largest member-owned banks, with roughly $13.4 billion in total assets and nearly 300,000 members.
As part of the proposed deal, Teachers Mutual and Australian Mutual will merge boards.
"We're taking two of their directors onto our board," explained Kearnan. "So we're dropping an aggregate of three, four directors."
In addition, members of both banks will have access to 13 branch locations — six existing Australian Mutual locations and seven existing Teachers Mutual branches — across New South Wales, the Australian Capital Territory, Victoria and Western Australia.
The duo said they plan to use the added resources to invest in customer service, products, technology and banking security.
"And there's no forced redundancies and there should be broader career opportunities over time," Teachers Mutual Chief Executive Officer Anthony Hughes said Thursday night.
Hughes added that members stand to benefit from the merger as well, citing lower fees, a broader range of products and expanded access to physical branches.
"We already have low fee banks; we don't charge the same fees that the big banks do in Australia," he explained. "We're proud of that fact. But we'll go further. We've looked at both banks, and whoever's got the lower fees, we've applied that approach. And that'll apply to both memberships across the combined banks.
"And we're broadening out the product set," Hughes said. "We're doing things like green loans, green car loans. We're going to have multiple offsets on mortgages, and some new features in our mobile app and internet banking. And we're almost doubling the amount of branches, very shortly after [the merger], should our members support the vote.
"I just want to take a moment to recognize how far we've come as a little, small credit union," the CEO said. "We've got an exciting future and [want to] acknowledge the next chapter ahead. But also, while we're going to get it a little bit bigger, we don't want to lose sight of our roots and why we're here."
