Newcastle Permanent Building Society's Chief Executive Officer, Terry Millett, has tendered his resignation after ten years in the role, out of a total of 13 with the organisation.Jeff Eather, the chair of Newcastle Permanent, said the board would commence an Australia-wide recruitment process for Millett's replacement immediately. Meanwhile, Millett has agreed to stay on in his role until towards the end of the year "to assist with an orderly and smooth transition to the new CEO". He did not discount the possibility that the next CEO could be promoted from within.In his time at the helm, the regional building society has come to employ nearly 1,000 staff, control around A$11 billion in assets, and ranks as the second-largest customer owned financial services provider in the country, not far behind CUA.In the 2016/17 year (the most recent annual report available) Newcastle Permanent wrote A$2.2 billion in home loans, expanding its portfolio by 1.3 times the industry growth rate to more than $8.5 billion, including almost $2 billion in the Sydney market. Millett spoke to Banking Day about the need to bring a 115 year old locally-based mutual into the modern age of banking, and to expand its reach beyond its home region of the Hunter Valley in NSW to gain economies of scale.He started with the assertion that for organisations in his sector to thrive, whether shareholder owned or mutuals, they actually have to be better than the rest. "That is, better where it counts, in delivering to customers; better in how they manage their business," Millett said."We've grown to the second largest customer owned organisation in Australia, and we've done that by taking business off banks, taking customers off them, and off other mutuals." "The test of time is which organisations are able to prosper and grow in a range of good times in hard times."Millett said his team had developed a model that allowed Newcastle Permanent to reach customers anywhere in New South Wales."Over the last ten years, initially using our call centre, we have built the capability for people anywhere in New South Wales - for that matter Australia - to do business with us. And then in the last six years we have been investing year after year in our digital banking capability."In essence, we are aiming to get to a place where everything that a customer can do in a branch can be done over the phone or via our digital offerings. We are a long way down that path."