What the BSB Register Shows About Banking Consolidation
The Australian BSB register records every bank, state, and branch code in the country. Because BSBFinder keeps a dated history of how the register changes, we can see which BSBs are registered and retired over time. This page summarises that activity from 2026-03-15 to 2026-09-01.
Read this first: a discontinued BSB is not a closed branch
A BSB can be retired for many reasons that have nothing to do with a branch closing its doors: mergers, brand consolidations, and routine renumbering all remove BSBs from the register. These figures describe what the BSB register records — they are a useful signal of structural change in Australian banking, but they are not a count of physical branch openings or closures.
For authoritative branch-location data, see APRA's annual Authorised Deposit-taking Institutions Points of Presence statistics, the canonical source for branch numbers in Australia.
Over this window, the register recorded 377 newly registered BSBs and 149 discontinued BSBs.
New BSB registrations per year
Discontinued BSBs per year
Discontinued BSBs by state
Net BSB change by institution
Registered minus discontinued BSBs over the window (largest net decreases first).
| Institution | New | Discontinued | Net |
|---|---|---|---|
| Heritage and People's Choice Limited | 0 | 6 | -6 |
| Macquarie Bank Limited | 0 | 5 | -5 |
| Bankwest (a division of Commonwealth Bank of Australia) | 0 | 4 | -4 |
| Norfina Limited | 0 | 2 | -2 |
| BNP Paribas | 0 | 1 | -1 |
| in1bank Limited | 0 | 1 | -1 |
| Mega International Commercial Bank Co, Ltd | 0 | 1 | -1 |
| Bank of Sydney Ltd | 1 | 2 | -1 |
| BankSA (a division of Westpac Banking Corp) | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| National Australia Bank Limited | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| Avenue Bank Ltd | 1 | 0 | +1 |
| Ebury Partners Australia Pty Ltd | 1 | 0 | +1 |
| Fat Zebra Pty Ltd | 1 | 0 | +1 |
| Indue Ltd (a division of Cuscal Limited) | 1 | 0 | +1 |
| Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Limited | 10 | 9 | +1 |
| AFT AU Pty Ltd | 2 | 0 | +2 |
| Bank of Queensland Limited | 2 | 0 | +2 |
| HSBC Bank Australia Limited | 2 | 0 | +2 |
| Bankers Trust Australia (a division of Westpac Banking Corp) | 3 | 0 | +3 |
| Flash Partners Pty Ltd | 7 | 0 | +7 |
Methodology
Figures come from BSBFinder's bsb_history
table, which records each register change (added, amended, discontinued) with the date it was
observed. Counts are distinct BSBs per change type.
Baseline snapshots are excluded. The initial data load and any full re-import register every BSB at once (tens of thousands on a single date). Including those would swamp the real signal, so any ETL run whose additions exceed a baseline threshold is filtered out. Only genuine incremental changes are counted.
The exact queries (baseline runs excluded in each):
-- new_per_year
SELECT EXTRACT(YEAR FROM observed_at)::int AS year,
COUNT(DISTINCT bsb) AS n
FROM bsb_history
WHERE change_type = 'added' AND etl_run_id NOT IN (baseline runs)
GROUP BY year ORDER BY year;-- discontinued_per_year
SELECT EXTRACT(YEAR FROM observed_at)::int AS year,
COUNT(DISTINCT bsb) AS n
FROM bsb_history
WHERE change_type = 'deleted' AND etl_run_id NOT IN (baseline runs)
GROUP BY year ORDER BY year;-- discontinued_per_state
SELECT c.state, COUNT(DISTINCT h.bsb) AS n
FROM bsb_history h JOIN bsb_current c ON c.bsb = h.bsb
WHERE h.change_type = 'deleted' AND h.etl_run_id NOT IN (baseline runs)
GROUP BY c.state ORDER BY n DESC;-- net_by_institution
SELECT i.name,
COUNT(DISTINCT h.bsb) FILTER (WHERE h.change_type='added') AS added,
COUNT(DISTINCT h.bsb) FILTER (WHERE h.change_type='deleted') AS discontinued
FROM bsb_history h
JOIN bsb_current c ON c.bsb = h.bsb
JOIN institutions i ON i.abbreviation = c.institution
WHERE h.etl_run_id NOT IN (baseline runs)
GROUP BY i.name;Data window: 2026-03-15 to 2026-09-01. The register is refreshed monthly with daily checks; this analysis grows as more months accrue.