When is a customer owned bank not a mutual bank, credit union or building society? When it’s a penny bank! Cairns Bank has been operating since 1899 and began as one such penny bank. While today it operates like a mutual bank and is member owned, its history is quite different in that it was created for small time savers (often children) and not for personal loans (as in credit unions) or to pool resources to buy a home (as in building societies). The idea of a ‘savings bank’, with the primary purpose of accepting savings deposits, which could be used by everyone is a historically recent development. The first European savings banks originated in the very late 18th century (the first in Germany) but they mostly proliferated in the 19th century.

Cairns Bank was established as the Cairns Cooperative Weekly Penny Savings Bank in 1899. It changed its name to Cairns Penny Savings & Loans in 2004. It became Cairns Bank in 2020. We hold Cairns Bank annual reports from 2007 onwards and contemporary governance documents and reports published online.