SBS Bank Today
Established in 1869, SBS Bank (Southland Building Society) is New Zealand's largest building society and is believed to be the only building society in the world to have achieved bank registration while maintaining its mutual structure of being owned by its members. SBS Bank officially received bank registration on October 7, 2008.
We have an 18-strong network of branches that spans the country. We currently have branches in Invercargill (Head Office) and Windsor, Gore, Queenstown, Cromwell, Dunedin, Timaru, Nelson, Blenheim, Hamilton, Tauranga and Christchurch, which has three branches located in Ferrymead, Riccarton and Papanui.
On 1 October 2010, Hastings Building Society (HBS) merged with SBS Bank and it now operates as HBS Bank adding another two branches in Hastings and Napier to the SBS Bank network, with a third opened in Havelock North in 2011.
As a mutual building society, if you borrow, save or invest with SBS Bank, you're known as a 'legal owner' or 'member.' Because we don't have to pay dividends, our primary obligation is to share the results of our success with our members.
We offer a wide range of banking services and products, including transactional banking, phone and internet banking, investments, residential and commercial lending, managed funds, agribusiness, consumer finance and insurance.
SBS Bank also has more than 320 sponsorships with organisations of all sizes throughout New Zealand. We are proud of our record of support for the communities to which our members belong and from our perspective, it's all about giving back to the community.
In recent years SBS Bank has invested more than $3 million in the wider SBS Bank community. It's important to us that we always act in our members' best interests and, accordingly many of the decisions around where we invest in our community rest with our branch managers. After all, it's the staff on the frontline that best knows the communities in which they work and live.
SBS Bank employs around 270 staff members who are based in Head Office and across the retail branches throughout the country (these figures do not include staff employed by SBS Bank's subsidiary companies).