Australians were sickened on November 20, 2019 when AUSTRAC revealed Westpac’s failures to report overseas transactions saw it turn a blind eye to customers using its systems to buy pay-per-view child pornography.

But if an independent review performed two years earlier into the bank's risk management framework was anything to go by, a creeping wave of nausea should have been lingering over the bank’s board and executive suite for some time.