Big Super-owned ME Bank has blamed ageing technology and legacy systems for its cutting off mortgage borrowers from redrawing on their home loan repayments without warning in the middle of the worst recession in living memory. This sounds like the excuses for fee-for-no-service scandals offered by the big four banks before the Hayne royal commission.

But wasn’t this challenger bank meant to have a different mission and culture, having been established by big union-based industry superannuation funds in 1994 to provide a more customer-focused alternative to the profit-focused big, bad commercial banks?