One More Thing:Having taken the reins just a fortnight ago, Denis Casey has wasted no time in laying out his ambitions for his time as head of Irish Life & Permanent.
Casey had his first outing with stock market analysts in London earlier this week, where he outlined his key strategic goals. Chief among them is a plan to make Permanent TSB Ireland's biggest retail bank by 2016. This would require it to add 500,000 personal customers over the next nine years, he said.
Casey pointed out that the group had added about 141,000 new customers over the past three years and that 250 current accounts were being opened each day by Permanent TSB.
By any measure, it's an impressive growth story. That said, most of the new business has been attracted by its free banking offer, which is now being aped by rivals.
Having picked the low-hanging fruit, Permanent TSB will surely find it a tough challenge to keep up the pace of customer acquisitions, especially with Ulster Bank, Halifax and National Irish Bank aggressively targeting the market.
Good old customer inertia is another reason why Permanent TSB will find it hard to prise customers away from AIB and Bank of Ireland, which between them have about 73 per cent of the current account market here. Permanent TSB's share is 11 per cent.
Permanent TSB's 100-strong branch network also leaves a lot to be desired, with long queues often a feature.
It is easy to see why Casey is aggressively targeting the retail banking market. Bank of Ireland yesterday reported that profits in its Irish banking business grew by 27 per cent last year.
He would also like to crank up the cross-selling of Irish Life's pension and investment products.
In addition, he has been bolstering his team of senior executives, poaching Tony Hession from AIB to head up the human resources division.
Casey has a decent track record. He helped build Irish Life's share of the retail market from 19 per cent to 28 per cent while in charge of the division.
His short spell at the helm of Permanent TSB was also successful, with the bank re-establishing itself as one of the biggest mortgage lenders.
Setting out to overtake Bank of Ireland and AIB as Ireland's biggest retail bank is to be admired. It's just hard to imagine Brian Goggin or Eugene Sheehy losing too much sleep worrying about the prospect.
