It was a matter of “going through the furnace, and coming out tempered by experience,” said Mr. Morgan, who was chief executive of Westpac, one of Australia’s major banks, during the crisis. “We were adamant that we would go into the next shock with the least risk and the most resilience, and would not engage in any more offshore frolics.”

The banks — with prodding from regulators — reformulated themselves to take a more conservative and domestically focused approach to lending. After that near-death experience, there remained the “Big Four” banks that together control about 80 percent of deposits; they are not allowed to merge with each other.

The banks also did not engage in the kind of expansionist strategy that had gotten them in trouble in 1991. They did not open huge offices in Hong Kong, London or New York, nor get in the business of creating the complex mortgage securities that were the nexus of the financial crisis.

Good regulation was part of it. “They were good quality regulators; the public sector was getting good people,” Mr. Morgan said. Both major political parties have tended to be tough on banks, and there is a single powerful regulator rather than a patchwork of them as in the United States.

But just as important was the sense among bank leaders that they would need to be ready when the next downturn came.

It’s not as if Australia’s banks are perfect actors. A royal commission established to examine the industry found widespread misconduct, including abuses of customers, in a report issued this year.

But they have focused on lending to Australians, especially for home mortgages, and held those loans on their own books. No doubt Australia has missed out on some opportunities by not hosting the big, complicated banks that operate worldwide and do more sophisticated forms of finance. Sydney does not have the concentration of high-paying finance jobs that London and Hong Kong do.