Operating from 321 existing NZ Post outlets, the bank would provide personal services such as cheque and savings accounts, Eftpos, credit cards, telephone and internet banking, mortgages and access to automatic teller Machines.
It would not offer corporate or business banking - which Finance Minister Michael Cullen said would give it a lower risk than the former state-owned BNZ.
The bank is forecast to be profitable after three years and would need 100,000 customers.
It plans to set average fees 20 to 30 per cent lower than existing bank charge, although some services, such as ATMs, may cost more.
Mr Anderton said it would hire about 100 new staff. But NZ Post was more cautious, saying there would be new jobs in marketing and development but other increases would depend on growth.
The bank will have startup capital of $78.2 million, with the Government kicking in $72.2 million and up to $6 million more coming from a lower NZ Post dividend to the state.
Dr Cullen said that would be the limit of the Government's investment - the bank "will have to stand or fall on its commercial merits."
However, he conceded that the Government might inject more capital if the bank needed to expandor if it ran into difficulties. But the Government was not a "soft touch" for SOEs, he stressed.
Since 1987, NZ Post had made $555 million in net profits and paid almost $510 million in dividends, but its core letter business was under pressure from e-mail, said Dr Cullen. It needed to diversify, and expertise in banking would help it to win international consulting work.
The bank is forecast to be worth $500 million in 10 years.
Mr Anderton said it would help the economy by cutting bank fees and rebuilding services in the regions.
But National's finance spokesman, Bill English, said the bank could not be profitable if it targeted beneficiaries and the low-paid. It wanted urban, not rural customers and middle-income people, not the poor and the beneficiaries whom Mr Anderton said it would help.
He predicted that too many of what NZ Post called "low-end customers" would result in the bank's raising fees to discourage them.
But Mr English distanced himself from National leader Jenny Shipley's warning that depositors' funds would not be safe.
"What is at risk here is the taxpayers' $80 million," he said. National would decide whether to kick in more money or sell if there was a change of Government next year.
Meanwhile, Government MPs have backed off naming the source of an early draft of the bank's business plan given to Mrs Shipley.
Dr Cullen in Parliament yesterday referred only to "some Tory rat on the board."
He said Mrs Shipley should reveal her informant to avoid suspicion falling on honourable men such as former National Trade Minister Philip Burdon, who resigned from the NZ Post board last year.
Mr Burdon told the Herald he had destroyed his NZ Post papers, but he had not been aware of all the details released by Mrs Shipley.
He categorically denied leaking any NZ Post information.
Former National MP Graeme Reeves, who on Monday said he had a copy of an early business plan but denied leaking information to Mrs Shipley, said he had checked the papers against news reports. Some details revealed by Mrs Shipley, particularly reference to the bank using second-hand security gear, had not been given to him.
Mr Reeves had earlier contacted NZ Post chairman Ross Armstrong to assure him he was not the source of the leak. Dr Armstrong said he accepted the assurance.
NZ Post has succeeded in getting Mrs Shipley to shred her copy of the draft plan, but Act leader Richard Prebble yesterday failed in a bid to table a copy in Parliament.
A spokesman for Mr Prebble said he would not release the plan, which completely supported Mrs Shipley's statements, but would continue to quote from it.
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