the mozo blog

These days, most of us consider marrying a cousin to be a somewhat unhealthy move. First of all, it’s illegal, and secondly, people eventually start asking why your child has three heads and an uncanny ability to eat watermelon through a barbed wire fence.

So it’s surprising to learn that the big banks have been marrying their cousins for years. You could be mistaken for thinking there’s competition in the banking industry, what with all these new products and banks popping up everywhere… But guess again: There are few banks and credit unions out there that don’t have a connection to one of the Big Four (ANZ, Westpac, Commonwealth, NAB) or some other large international financial organisation.

So we thought we’d do a bit of a family tree, to give you an idea of who’s in bed with whom, which bastard bankchild secretly belongs to which reluctant father, and so on.

First up, the banks that literally own the other banks:

ANZ
- OneDirect
- SmartyPig
- eTrade
- Esanda

Commonwealth Bank
- BankWest
- Colonial First State Investments
- ASB Bank (New Zealand)

National Australia Bank (NAB)
- UBank
- Challenger Financial Services
- MLC

Westpac
- St George
- BankSA
- RAMS Home Loans
- BT Financial Group
- Asgard

Bendigo Bank
- Adelaide Bank
- Rural Bank (formerly Elders Rural Bank)

Aussie
- Wizard Home Loans

Secondly, there are those banks that provide the actual credit for credit cards, which is then packaged by someone else.

Citibank
- Australian Central Credit Union credit cards
- Bank of Queensland credit cards
- Community CPS Credit Union credit cards
- CUA credit cards
- IMB credit cards
- MyState credit cards
- Suncorp credit cards
- Virgin credit cards

GE Money
- Myer Visa Card
- Coles Group Source Card

HSBC
-    Woolworths Everyday Money

We might not talk about it in public, but it seems everybody’s up for a spot of financial incest on the side.

Compare Banks at Mozo.com.au