Brittany Bickford

Brittany is working in the Swan Hill Rural Bank office as an agribusiness relationship assistant – her first full-time role post the Agribusiness graduate program.

5.40 AM

Morning alarm. Time to get up for my gym class at 6.00 am. 

7.00 AM

Shower time, then I’ll make my breakfast smoothie and head out the door around 8.00 am.

8.15 AM

Collect the work mail from the post office box.

8.20 AM

Arrive at work and start my computer. I check what emails came into my inbox overnight. Today there are a lot of reporting emails that have come through. These emails provide information about any loans that are out of order, upcoming fixed interest rates due to end in the next month, annual reviews due to being completed and other such reports. I also have an email from Treasury with an interest rate offering to a client for an equipment finance quote I was preparing yesterday. I will finish that quote off and send it to my boss (a senior agribusiness relationship manager) for him to send on to the client

8.30 AM

Coffee time! Everyone in the office sits down to have coffee together to start the day. We have a strict ‘no work at the coffee table’ rule in the office and we just catch up with each other and get some team bonding in every morning.

After coffee, I head back to my desk and check the Dishonour Management System to see if any of our clients are over their limits on their accounts and make the arrangements to recommend or dishonour the payments in excess for their overdrawn accounts. This is often completed by phoning the client to see when the account will be back in order and what funds are due to come into their accounts soon.

Phone calls will usually start rolling in for the office about 9.00 am, so I will continue to field them and make the appropriate follow up actions as they come in throughout the day.

10.30 AM

Coffee time again.

10.45 AM

Some loan documents that have been executed have come back to the office today, so I have scanned them and saved to the client file. I will now put these in the post to go back to our Bendigo office to have the deal finalised and funds provided to the client.

I also had a client’s cash flow budget come in yesterday, so I will enter that into our AgriBusiness Banking System now, to help progress their application.

A Client’s accountant has emailed requesting some loan statements for a mutual client to help with completing their 2018 financials statements. I will go into our statements system and download what is required and email them to him. 

12.00 PM

Lunchtime. I’ll drive home to have this, as I live close to the office – the good thing about living in a country town

1.00 PM

Another request for an equipment finance quote has come in now, so I will email Treasury for a rate offering and then draw up the quote on our systems and send it to the client. The agribusiness relationship manager has said this loan will go ahead, so I will create the loan in our AgriBusiness Banking System and do the necessary searches (ABN, PPSR etc) to support the application. I will also complete some other analysis on the application to help the manager progress the loan application in a timely manner.

A client has walked into the office asking for a print out a summary of their farm management deposits that they have currently, so I have printed that off also.

2.30 PM

Time to go to the post office and send the office’s mail for the day. For this, I must drive into town as we are on the outskirts of Swan Hill at our branch. I will also drop into the Bendigo Bank branch and deposit some cheques that clients have brought into us today.

3.00 PM

Afternoon coffee time.

Time to finish off any tasks I have for the day and start to prepare for tomorrow. We have a client coming into the office for their annual review meeting, so I have gone through the information that was provided to us last year to update that in tomorrow's review. This will mainly focus on the cash flow budget for the year to make sure they have the appropriate funds available to the business given their plans for the farming operation for the next 12 months. I will also print off last year’s assets and liabilities statement to update that. Another relationship manager is going to a client’s farm tomorrow, so I have printed out an application form for the client to sign as part of that meeting too.

5.00 PM

Hometime. 

6.00 PM

Time for my boxing class at the local boxing club. ​

7.30 PM

Dinner and time to catch up with my housemates on their days.

9.30 PM

Shower and bedtime.