The CAFCA/ABC Organiser Account, which exists solely to provide my income, is with Australian-owned Westpac and has been for many years. Periodically we get queried about this and asked why we don’t swap it to Kiwibank (or another New Zealand-owned bank). When the Organiser Account was established in 1991, it was with a locally owned NZ bank (Trustbank Canterbury). That was the reason we chose it. Five years later it was sold to Westpac (and CAFCA was central in the campaign to try and stop that happening).

We made the pragmatic decision to stay with Westpac because the alternative is to have to rely on the 60+ people who are regular pledgers to the Account to make the necessary changes. We can’t do that, neither can any bank, they would have to do it themselves (we’ve checked). I’ve been through this exercise once before with another organisation, involving only three pledgers having to change to Kiwibank – it took more than a year, and involved waiting for one of them to come to Christchurch, then taking that person to the relevant bank to get it done. With 60+ people involved, we would inevitably lose a chunk of them. It would be far more complicated than the much simpler task of transferring a personal account. So we let sleeping dogs lie.

And – you’ll be relieved to know – the great bulk of the Organiser Account’s money is held with Kiwibank, namely in a term deposit. A much smaller sum is kept as the operating account at Westpac, just enough to cover my pay. You can rest assured that every CAFCA and ABC account is with Kiwibank, as is my personal account. Both of CAFCA, and ABC, and I, were Kiwibank founder customers.