In a change flagged early last week at its annual 2016-17 profit announcement, B&E one of Tasmania's largest home-grown ADIs - and Australia's oldest building society - has confirmed it will convert to a customer owned bank, the Bank of us, from November 1. There will be just three building societies left in the Australian banking sector, with an increased likelihood they will follow suit.In announcing the name change, chief executive Paul Ranson and chairman Stephen Brown restated what had seemed at first to be a semantic argument by Louise Petschler, then chief executive of Abacus, the industry body for credit unions and building societies, in favour of the term "mutual bank" back in 2011. "The term 'building society' is less relevant to people today. When you use the word 'bank', people immediately understand," Ranson said."By using the term 'customer owned bank', we hope to attract new customers and retain our existing ones. We want to make sure we continue to grow and remain viable for the foreseeable future," Brown said.Bank of us has more than A$700 million in assets, 30,000 customers and a statewide retail branch network. It was known as the Bass & Equitable Building Society until November 2001.B&E approved $169 million worth of loans in 2016-17; its loan portfolio increased by $47.6 million to $630 million; and total deposits increased by $29 million to finish the financial year at $684 million.