The company reported 3 per cent growth in expenses, factoring in around $14 million in savings from the acquisition of ME Bank, but that did not deter investors.

“The costs were a little bit worse but the margins improving are more relevant for earnings,” said Omkar Joshi, portfolio manager at Opal Capital Management. “It’s not a massive surprise given interest rates are going up. Add to that, the stock had been pretty weak recently.”

Frazis said although the one-off cost of acquiring ME Bank had been significant, it had raised $1.5 billion in deposits and delivered the bank nine times the number of new customers per month than it was getting previously.

Frazis said that although increasing interest rates would be difficult for customers in general, the bank had taken steps to grow its books while also ensuring its customers were not over-leveraged.

“There are some people in Australia that have never experienced a rising interest rate,” he said. “We’ve got about 53 per cent of our customers who are over a year or more ahead on repayments.

“So again, that’s another indication that our customers are really well-placed to weather rising interest rates.”

Frazis would not be drawn on ANZ’s proposed $4.9 billion acquisition of Suncorp, expected to be submitted to the ACCC for approval in coming weeks, saying “Suncorp and ANZ would do what’s right by their shareholders and customers”.

“We’re very pro competition, and our focus is what we’re doing with our customers,” he said. “Our digital transformation does improve our cost-income ratio quite materially, which means we’re able to be competitive going forward.”

Bank of Queensland shareholders will receive a fully franked dividend of 24 cents per share in November, an increase of 9 per cent on the first half of 2022.

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