Standing next to a massive scrabble set, Bank of Queensland chief executive George Frazis had time to smile. It was September 2019, and he’d just started at Brisbane-based BoQ where staff spelled out “Welcome George” with giant scrabble letters against a dark-brown brick wall.

Here was the star recruit. The guy from big bank Westpac hired to restore a medium-sized lender with anaemic loan growth, trapped in a spaghetti-bowl mess of technological systems and suffering poor staff morale.