Irish Life & Permanent has posted a document to shareholders detailing plans to create a new holding company which is expected to list in mid-January.
In a statement issued to the Irish Stock Exchange (ISE) this morning, the group said a prospectus for the new company was also published this morning.
The publication of the document and prospectus come ahead ofan extraordinary general meeting planned for December 17th.
The group said that the main disadvantage of its current status is that it is both a holding company for life assurance and investment management as well as being a licensed bank.
"A more desirable structure would see a new listed holding company whose sole function would be to act as the group's holding company," IL&P said.
"This proposed new structure will do that and offers the further opportunity, as appropriate, to restructure the life assurance, investment management and/or the banking businesses in a prompt and flexible manner in response to possible changes in the financial services environment," it added.
Last week, the company raised its three-year forecast for loan losses and said the net interest margin would be squeezed as it weans itself off cheap European Central Bank (ECB) funding.
The company said in a trading update that loan losses would total between €800 million and €900 million for the three years to 2011 - up from the previous forecast of €700 million last August.
The deterioration was attributed to declines in the value of the commercial properties backing loans of €2.4 billion in an overall loan book of €40 billion in the banking division Permanent TSB.
Steep falls in property values has also led to a €105 million decline on short-term investment fluctuations in the life business.
Separately, yesterday it emerged that talks between EBS and Irish Nationwide on a possible merger are likely to get underway this week.
It it widely belived that should the merger occur, Irish Life & Permanent will offlaod Permanent TSB into an enlarged "third banking force" with the two building societies to compete against the two main banks