Felix Lee’s banking taxidermy

in1bank, a defunct neobank targeting Chinese-speaking Australians, is the latest in a long line of small banks to meet an inauspicious end. According to the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority, of the seventeen banking licenses it has granted since 2018, six had voluntarily handed back their authorisations by July 2025.

It was on January 22, 2026, in1bank's directors waved the white flag, announcing they would give up its license. Ordinarily the death of a bank of this pedigree would not warrant a column inch. It had near its end fewer than 800 customers and a paltry deposit book of $6 million. 

Curiously, weeks before the license was eventually revoked on May 1, holders of close to three-quarters of in1bank's voting shares backed a $20 million rescue from SME Bank, yet the board sank it. And by the terms of his share subscription, in1bank was worth more to its major shareholder Felix Lee – whose daddy is property developer and casino high roller Phillip Dong Fang Lee – dead than alive.[[Fang Lee was a star of the Bell inquiry into Star Entertainment spending a tidy $2.27 billion at the casino between 2007 and 2021. His companies have been fined, more than once, for environmental wreckage at his Fame Cove estate near Port Stephens. In 2021, the Australian Taxation Office managed to persuade the Federal Court to freeze $272 million of his assets, his Point Piper estate included.]]