By Aashika Jain and Matt Scuffham
(Reuters) - Britain's TSB Banking Group Plc (L:TSB) said pretax profit rose 2.3 percent last year after it picked up customers from established rivals and added it would consider acquisitions to accelerate its expansion.
TSB would not comment directly on speculation it could bid for British banking newcomer Aldermore which is planning a stock market listing next month.
"If we have the right assets at the right price and they make sense to our shares, then we would look at them," Chief Executive Paul Pester told reporters on Wednesday.
British regulators are keen for new banks to challenge Britain's big four lenders -- Lloyds, Royal Bank of Scotland (L:RBS), Barclays (L:BARC) and HSBC (L:HSBA), which provide three-quarters of the country's personal current accounts.
TSB, which became Britain's seventh biggest lender when hived off from Lloyds Banking Group (L:LLOY) last June, said it had taken an 8.4 percent share of all new personal current accounts opened over the past year with almost 500,000 new TSB bank accounts set up in 2014.
The bank wants to lift its share of the personal current account market to 6 percent from a figure of 4.2 percent when it listed on the London Stock Exchange. It expects to pick up more than 6 percent of all new current accounts opened in 2015.
The bank received over 300 million pounds ($465 million) of applications to date for its mortgage range it opened to brokers in January, TSB said.
"This seems to suggest that the risk is to the upside on management's 1.5 billion pounds loan growth target for 2015," Citi analysts said in a note to clients.
Pretax profit rose to 133.7 million pounds for the year ended Dec. 31 from 130.7 million pounds in 2013.
Shares in the bank have fallen 10 percent since their listing on the London Stock Exchange. They were trading up 1.3 percent at 264.7 pence at 0855 GMT.
Lloyds sold a 38.5 percent stake in TSB through a stock market flotation of the business in last June followed by the sale of a further 11.5 percent shareholding in last September.
Lloyds was forced by European regulators to sell the 631 branches which now form TSB as a condition of receiving state aid during the financial crisis.
It must sell the whole of TSB by the end of 2015 and is free to start selling more shares in the company from today, Wednesday. ($1 = 0.6450 pounds)
($1 = 0.6447 pounds)