Since September, ex-Treasury boss John Fraser has been a director of what is now known as Judo Bank. That's in addition to his role as a director of AMP Bank, which he started in February, six months after joining the board of AMP. Judo, predominantly a business lender, will soon offer the broader suite of banking services after being granted authority by APRA to become a deposit-taking institution in April.

Given this, you'd think that while assessing Judo's application, the regulator might have objected to the presence of Fraser on the board. We'd have thought it tricky to be a director of both an upstart bank and a traditional one at the same time, the interests of both being, in the long term, rather contrary to each other.