BankWest has overtaken Suncorp-Metway to become the seventh largest retail deposits bank in Australia.
According to new household deposit figures from the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA), BankWest has scooped Suncorp's 10,723 household savings accounts, edging above their competitor at 10,901.
Since December 2005, the Bank of Western Australia has increased its deposits market share by 21.42 per cent, making it the fastest-growing deposits bank in Australia.
APRA reported that the Commonwealth Bank of Australia remains the clear market leader with 86,000 household deposits. It is followed by the Westpac Banking Corporation at 41,000, the National Australia Bank at 40,000, the Australia and New Zealand Banking Group at 32,000, St George Bank at 30,000 and ING at 16,000.
It is the first time in more than 18 months that there has been a change in the order by balance sheet size of any of the top 10 deposit-taking institutions in Australia, BankWest said.
It is a signal that the bank's strategy to attract retail customers is working, BankWest Head of Marketing and Products David Rose said.
"When we launched TeleNet [savings accounts] in October 2004 as the first initiative in our expansion strategy, we said we wanted to drive change in the financial services industry and differentiate ourselves by introducing highly competitive products that give customers a better deal," Rose said.
"A little more than two years later we can see the change in the banking landscape that we have talked about represented in cold hard data."
BankWest offers customers the highest deposits interest rate in the market at 6.8 per cent per annum as part of a 12-month introductory rate for new TeleNet customers.
