 The purpose of Databank was defined within a set of contractual obligations in the "1969 Processing Agreement".The Agreement was between the consortium members, and was essentially about the services and service levels to be provided by Databank, and the constraints that would exist to ensure that lead bank ownership of any new application/system, and bank competitiveness, were maintained.The formation of Databank came at a time when computer systems were a scarce and expensive commodity in New Zealand, with the import of computers being restricted by the then government's prevailing highly regulatory economic policy.