Suncorp branch closures hit southeast Queensland senior citizen zones

SUNCORP continues to cut a swathe through the senior citizen havens of southeast Queensland. Now the axe also has fallen on the bank’s Cleveland branch.

Customers protest the closure of Suncorp’s Inala Plaza Shopping Centre branch in July. Picture: AAP Image/Jono Searle

NO GO ZONES

SUNCORP continues to cut a swathe through the senior citizen havens of southeast Queensland. City Beat noted last week that the home-grown bank has shut its branches on Bribie Island and at Sandgate, two suburbs with lots of retirees.

Now the axe also has fallen on the bank’s Cleveland branch, where more than a quarter of the population is aged over 60. One reader told City Beat that elderly people in the area are now expected to use the Australia Post office or phone banking if they want to access Suncorp services. The reader also notes that Suncorp is offering “internet bank training” to prepare their long-suffering customers for the brave new world sans human tellers.

“My mum is 86 and has no idea how to use a computer or phone,” the reader fumes. You would expect better from our Queensland bank, but then again managing director Michael Cameron and Doug McTaggart are the only residing Queenslanders left on the board. In its defence, Suncorp says the Australia Post store, in the Harbourside Shopping Centre at Cleveland, is less than a 100 metres from its former branch.

OUT BANKED

MORE on banks. A City Beat reader responded with a story of his own to our recent complaint that the folks at CommInsure have put up premiums a whopping 17 per cent. “It certainly struck a chord for me,” he says, referring to a bad experience he had with CommInsure way back in 2001. “My wife suffers from depression, and our move for business reasons to another state took its toll. This resulted in her being hospitalised for a month and taking 18 months to fully recover. As a result CommInsure refused to renew her next policy, which she had held for quite a while.” Not surprisingly this reader decided to cancel his policy and never have anything to do with CommInsure again.

PEDAL TO THE METAL

THE move by a group of investors to put the current board of Metallica Minerals to the sword appears to have hit a snag. Shareholders owning about 5.2 per cent of the small mining company’s shares have called for a special meeting to dismiss the board, which they say is not performing. That is allowed under the Corporations Act provided the shareholders calling for the meeting hold at least 5 per cent of the company. But Metallica appears to have given a big “two to the valley” to the dissidents, telling the ASX yesterday that the notice to call the meeting was invalid. Metallica yesterday declined to say exactly why because it was “confidential,” but said the shareholder group had submitted notices on two occasions and “on both occasions what they put forward was incorrect and invalid”. Paul Dostal, one of the shareholders calling for the meeting, tells us that he and the other investors are looking at their legal options, but are determined the meeting will go ahead. Apparently, the reason the meeting notice was held to be invalid was that each resolution was not stapled individually to the shareholders’ names.

METALLICA REWIND

ONE of the new directors being proposed by the dissident investors of Metallica is Andrew Gillies. Old timers might recall that Gillies was a founding director of Metallica in 1997, listing the company on the ASX in 2004 and serving as managing director for more than a decade until 2015. He retired as a director last year but now is back for another crack amid claims the current board is not up to scratch.

EXECUTIVE RECALL

THREE former executives of Gold Coast-based Retail Food Group (RFG) have been summonsed to appear before the federal parliamentary inquiry into the franchise sector after repeatedly refusing to appear. Former chief Tony Alford, former managing director Andre Nell – who left the company in May – and former senior executive Alicia Atkinson were served with a summons last week to attend Parliament on November 26.