Up 13 per cent year to date and looking undervalued still, Auswide Bank from Queensland is one of many niche players in Australian financial services with a bit of an ADI consolidation story behind it and plenty more ahead yet.

If it wasn’t for the tsunami risk you’d be placing IMB Bank in Wollongong pretty prominently in any list of ADIs headed for a rollup. And they’re stranded already with the two big Newcastle building societies doing the business.

And People’s Choice Credit Union and Heritage Bank are nutting out prosperous options.

Auswide Bank’s eyes are mainly roaming towards mutual banks and credit unions, riffing off the Your Credit Union precedent from Brisbane not long ago.

Martin Barrett, the CEO of Auswide who trained in the hard grind of Clydesdale Bank and St George Bank before settling in Bundaberg a decade ago, is gently talking his way towards any YCU rerun he can conjure - only much, much bigger.

With who and when, we dunno, but it will probably happen eventually in some form.

If it’s ROA’s we are talking about, Liberty Financial Group is best in class

LFG has an ROA of 1.9 per cent over FY2021. And oddly not even worth 25 cents last week on their share price.