If an ASX income investor is looking for big dividends on the share market, the first place they will probably go to is the ASX 200 bank sector. ASX bank shares have long been stalwarts of dividend-focused investors, thanks to decades of large and fully franked dividend payments to investors.
Most investors will naturally gravitate toward the big four banks. Commonwealth Bank of Australia (ASX: CBA), Westpac Banking Corp (ASX: WBC), National Australia Bank Ltd (ASX: NAB) and ANZ Group Holdings Ltd (ASX: ANZ) are the clear market leaders, with long histories of providing baking services to Australians. They have a reputation for strength and stability, and as such, feature in most income investors' portfolios.
But they are not the only choices facing dividend-hungry investors today. In fact, there is an ASX bank outside the big four that currently offers a dividend yield even better than the likes of CBA, ANZ, Westpac and NAB. It's Bendigo and Adelaide Bank Ltd (ASX: BEN).
Bendigo Bank is a relative minnow compared to its larger brethren. It's currently trading with a market capitalisation of $4.95 billion, less than 3% of CBA's $170 billion size at present.
But this smaller ASX bank is still an entrenched Australian bank with a solid customer base, strong earnings and, yes, a monstrous dividend yield.
How does the Bendigo Bank dividend stack up against the big four ASX bank shares?
Let's illustrate. So right now, CBA offers the smallest trailing dividend yield of the big four at 4.18%. NAB is a little better at 5.24%, and Westpac is at 5.6%. ANZ leads the big four with its present yield of 5.98%.
But Bendigo Bank blows the big four away with its dividend yield of 6.36% today. That comes fully franked too, which grosses up that yield all the way to 9.09%.
This dividend yield comes from Bendigo Bank's last two dividend payments. Investors bagged a 29 cents per share interim dividend just last month. Preceding this payment, there was the final dividend of 26.5 cents per share that shareholders enjoyed last September.
The latest interim dividend was a pleasing hike from the 26.5 cents per share payment from last year. But the bank still isn't back to paying out the dividends it was back in 2018 and 2019. In both years, investors enjoyed a total of 70 cents per share in dividend income.
But even so, the dividend pay rise investors have just enjoyed, as well as the big four-smashing dividend yield of over 6% today, certainly make this ASX bank share stand out amongst its peers today.
