CUA has announced that its chief sales officer Paul Lewis, will step up to become chief executive officer of Australia's largest credit union from 1 November 2019. He will take over from Rob Goudswaard, who declared in April he was leaving at the end of his current five-year contract. Lewis joined CUA in February 2018 from Westpac, where he was senior head of strategy and transformation. Since arriving at CUA Lewis has been responsible for key business lines and customer oriented products, including the iM CUA personal banker messaging app, a branch network, the CUA Direct call centre, the broker channel and general insurance partnerships.It seems this experience in managing frontline teams was a deciding factor in getting Lewis over the line, as CUA sets itself to expand at the expense of tarnished bank reputations in the wake of the banking royal commission. Australia's largest credit union now has 550,000 customers across its banking, insurance and health insurance business lines."Australians have made clear that they want banking providers to put their customers' interests first. Paul brings a deep understanding of this, having led our member-facing frontline teams over the past year and a half," CUA chairman Nigel Ampherlaw said.Lewis has 15 years' leadership experience in retail banking includes senior executive roles at ANZ - for instance, general manager of the group's Australian retail branch network.For his part, Goudswaard will leave an organisation that has been transformed to a level of digital competence with an added a level of big bank nous that will serve it well over the next few years.This has included signing up to Silicon Valley "banking innovator" Pivotus Ventures, taking on sponsorship of Brisbane's T20 cricket team, and the hiring in January of Megan Keleher, former VP of strategy, marketing and product at Fujitsu Australia Limited into the newly created role of chief marketing officer.It remains to be seen how large CUA does become, and whether it does so by patiently accumulating disillusioned bank customers - or goes for a big hit merger or two. Previously Banking Day has speculated on the likelihood of a tie-up between the largest mutual ADI in the country, one with more than A$13 billion in loans under management and retail deposits "which now exceed $10 billion" and another of almost equal size: People's Choice Credit Union in South Australia, creating an ADI with $23 billion in assets and 900,000 members.The two credit union heavyweights have been running a shared purchasing and services joint venture, Mutual Marketplace, since early 2017.