Almost 600,000 Newcastle Permanent and Greater Bank members will start voting on Wednesday on a proposed historic merger of the institutions.
The leadership of both banks are cautiously optimistic that 75 per cent of voting members will express support for the proposal.
Special General Meetings to ratify the vote will be held on November 2.
Federal Treasurer Jim Chalmers gave the green light to the merger proposal last Friday.
If passed, the new merged entity would become Australia's largest customer-owned bank with assets valued at $19.8 billion.
Following an affirmative vote, the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority would be expected to sign-off on the merger within a fortnight. The banks would formally merge on March 1, 2023.
The institutions have given a guarantee that there would be no forced redundancies in the combined 1600-person workforce or branch closures for at least two years.
Both institutions recorded strong results for the 2022 financial year. The Greater Bank's total assets were valued at $8.4 billion, up from $8.1 billion the previous year.
Newcastle Permanent's total assets grew 3.8 per cent to $12.1billion.
The bank also reported a record $2.6billion in home loan approvals, up 7 per cent on the previous year.
Newcastle Permanent chairman Jeff Eather said the proposal would allow the banks to expand their lending capabilities and compete with the 'big four' (Commonwealth, Westpac, NAB and ANZ).
"Our intent is to solidify the lending base that we both have here in the Hunter, but to expand our lending capability into geographical areas outside of the Hunter. Both of us already operate in NSW and southeast Queensland but with a concentration near Newcastle in the Hunter Valley.
"The intent post-merger would be to take those offerings beyond that small geographical base. The reason for that is that both organisations win national awards for our products and our service and our overall rankings in terms of best banks in Australia. So there's already goodwill built up among customers in other areas.
"It's not as if, as we expand our offerings, we have no goodwill and people haven't heard of us. People have and we're recognised for that.
So we have products and services that will carry across into other areas. The merger is about delivering scale and we need greater scale to continue to be able to compete with the big four."
The larger combined entity would also open the door to future mergers with smaller players.
"It's the smaller mutuals who won't have the capability to keep up with the legislative requirements, and the governance requirements that are being imposed on the technology and their ability to compete," Mr Eather said.
"We need scale; $20 billion is a good start, but we need to scale up beyond that. So the targets will probably be smaller industry players who will be looking for consolidation, and they'll be looking for the things that we do really well in terms of being customer owned mutual's that support our communities."
Greater Bank chairman Wayne Russell said the bank's staff recognised the merger's benefits.
"If you look at the cohorts, you're always going to have some really positive, you're going to have some who are negative and then you've got a cohort in the middle.
"What we've found over time as people have thought about the benefits, the cohort of undecided in the centre is becoming more positive. There's still some who are uncertain, but that has shrunk," he said.
"There are so many opportunities in areas like finance, the regulatory side and IT development where you simply can't get people.
"The bigger the organisation the more attractive it is and the better the career opportunities."
The Newcastle Permanent and Greater Bank contribute a combined $4.5million each year to Hunter communities. Both institutions have committed to growing this area of their operations.
The Finance Sector Union welcomed the two year moratorium on job cuts but expressed concern about the future role of retail branches.
"In the last 18 months the big four banks have abandoned local and regional communities with large numbers of branch closures. "These communities rely on the mutual sector to provide them with low cost banking services that aren't driven by the need to maximise profit," National secretary Julia Angrisano said.
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