Bendigo Bank in Australia’s most trusted brands

Bendigo Bank this week was named one of Australia's Most Trusted Brands in the annual Reader's Digest awards.

Bendigo was Highly Commended in the finance category, following up its wins of 2010 and 2011.

"It's nice to have a podium finish as one of Australia's top three trusted banks," said Bendigo's Retail Executive Dennis Bice.

"Trust starts with service and the recognition reflects on the quality of our staff and their focus on producing the best outcomes for customers.

"But it's bigger than that, too. It also reflects Bendigo Bank's contribution to the prosperity of the 500-plus communities we serve.

"Our Community Banking network, for instance, has now contributed more than $120 million to local projects and that will grow by $20 million this year alone.

"People give their trust based on the way you act towards them and this is a big vote of confidence in the way in which we go about things."

Mr Bice said Bendigo already had Australia's fifth-biggest branch network and continued to extend its customer services.

"That includes digital services, which are becoming ever more important to people. We will soon launch a new mobile banking platform that will give people secure control of their banking from their phone.

"And recently we launched a system called redy that enables people to pay for goods with their phone at redy merchants. Importantly, these payments will also earn customers reward dollars they can elect to donate to local projects or charities.

"It's a great payment system, but the bigger piece is that it also gives people incentive to shop locally and keep money in their community."

The Reader's Digest awards - Australia's Most Trusted Brands

1. Scoping: An initial scoping survey was conducted to build brand lists for each category, via an open-ended questionnaire.

2. Measurement: After analysis of the scoping results, the main survey was deployed to 2,413 Australians who rated brands on a trust scale of 1-10.

Forty-six consumer categories were surveyed in total, with one winner and two highly commended brands in each group. Data was post-weighted to ABS population estimates, to ensure the data is representative of the Australian population.