Following a 29-year career with the bank, Marnie Baker will replace the incumbent managing director, Mike Hirst, himself a 15 year veteran at Bendigo and Adelaide, with nine of those years as the group’s lead executive.

For almost two decades Baker held various executive roles across the group’s divisions, recently leading the bank’s entry into the new industry-wide digital payments set up, the New Payments Platform.

Baker is among four women holding the group’s nine top executive positions.

According to the Workplace Gender Equality Agency’s 2016 data, 5.7 per cent of financial and insurance services industry chief executives are female, while 73 per cent of key management positions are held by men.

Baker is a Bendigo local, and is currently the chief customer officer of what is Australia’s fifth largest retail bank and will assume Hirst’s duties of leading its 7,200 staff from July 2.

Baker will receive a $1.2 million annual salary, with an additional deferred base payment of 50,000 ordinary shares, per year subject to shareholder approval, alongside short and long-term incentives.

In the last financial year, Hirst received a base salary of $1.4 million, with incentive-based payments lifting the total to $2.2 million.

– AAP