Suncorp aims to earn a profit from its banking business of between A$300 million and $350 million a year, the group's chief executive, Patrick Snowball, said yesterday. This compares with a profit for its "core bank" of $289 million in the year to June 2013.However, this is only around half the profit earned by the bank before the financial crisis exposed the flaws in its business strategy.Suncorp's 2013 result will be the last to distinguish between its core bank, set up in early 2009, and the non-core bank. The latter incurred a pre-tax loss of $484 million on the sale of most of its troubled loan portfolio to Goldman Sachs. The overall loss for the non-core bank was $632 million, equal to three quarters of the insurance profit for the year.Suncorp said it had hit its primary targets for the core bank, with a net interest margin of 1.86 per cent for the full year, lending growth of 9.5 per cent and a loan to deposit ratio of 66.5 per cent.The bank is aiming for lending growth of between seven per cent and nine per cent over the next year.One drag on its 2014 profit will be "stranded operating costs" from winding up the non-core bank, meaning some performance targets may not be met until 2015.