One bank is closing while another opens in the small regional community of Holbrook, in southern New South Wales.

The town's only current bank, NAB, will shut its branch's doors on Thursday.

But Hume Bank has announced it is opening in the town with a population of almost 2,000 people, bucking a national trend of regional bank branch closures as services and customers move online. 

Greater Hume Shire Council Mayor Tony Quinn says the new bank is a big win for the community. 

He said he went into "total shock" in November when he found out the NAB branch was closing, which would leave customers who wanted face-to-face services facing a 45-minute drive south to Albury. 

Cr Quinn said the area had a lot of elderly people who wanted a bank, and he said the council was quick to put the feelers out.

Having no bank in Holbrook would be a "disaster for senior citizens", he said.

The council approached Hume Bank, and they will be opening in March from within the council offices. 

"The fact that part of our office wasn't used made it an excellent opportunity to get Hume to come into that space," Cr Quinn said.

A town with no bank 

Submissions to the Regional Banking Taskforce last year showed that older Australians, persons with disabilities, migrant communities, and First Nations peoples often faced greater barriers to accessing online banking services.

The taskforce's final report, published last September, found that digital literacy and connectivity were challenges in some small regional communities where the local bank had closed. 

Technical literacy presents another challenge.

Holbrook Meals on Wheels delivered 895 meals in December. Office coordinator Tania Saunders said a lot of their clients were not "IT inclined". 

Ms Saunders even delivers meals to a man who uses an old-fashioned bank book with a handwritten balance. 

It was also an important opportunity for one-on-one contact with someone which, Ms Saunders said, could be the customer's only opportunity for human interaction that day. 

An exception 

Hume Bank chief executive Stephen Capello said the trend of bank branch closures in regional and remote Australia "reduced access to what was clearly an essential service". 

It also impacted surrounding businesses as customers did not just take their banking out of town when a local branch closed, he said. 

Hume has branches nearby in Jindera, Culcairn, and Howlong. Holbrook will be its 15th branch. 

"We always recognise the positive impact our physical branch network has had," Mr Capello said. 

Cr Quinn hoped the new bank would be a success. 

He encouraged the community to "wrap their arms around this new bank and make sure it's totally viable".