Patrick Snowball’s start date as Suncorp CEO is eight weeks away, on September 1.

By then, with any luck, newspaper headlines combining the words snowball, sun and hell will seem unquestionably trite and to be avoided at all cost.

Few would argue that Suncorp needs a strong person at the helm, and the fact that it’s a person with a strong insurance background has not surprisingly fed speculation that the Brisbane-based bancassurer will cut its struggling Metway Bank operations loose at some stage.

It remains to be seen just how easy a task this would be, given the bank’s exposure to bad debt and its competitive disadvantage in chasing wholesale funding.

The Australian Consumer and Competition Commission has also been grumbling about the anti-competitive effects of major banks gobbling up regionals, but few see this as a real impediment if someone actually wanted to buy Metway.

In any case, Suncorp remains ostensibly committed to its current bancassurance model, despite the February departure of CEO John Mulcahy who was very much its champion.

Mr Snowball can’t be expected to achieve miracles overnight – even a $2.1 million base salary doesn’t come with such guarantees – but Suncorp’s long-suffering shareholders couldn’t be blamed for expecting them. The pressure will be on from day one.

What miracles, and by when? Let’s look at his task over the first 100 days and contemplate what investors want Mr Snowball to do.

Credit Suisse analyst Arjan van Veen says the thing should be to engender some certainty around the bank.
 
“They should either sell it – that would be a big win – or finalise the strategy around it,” he told insuranceNEWS.com.au.

The next step should be to improve disclosure around the insurance operations, although Acting CEO Chris Skilton is seeing to this anyway.

“For example, with the life insurance business they’re starting to disclose embedded values,” Mr van Veen said.

“Then there’s a question of doing what [IAG CEO] Mike Wilkins did, which is to take the jewels in the crown and ring-fence them to satisfy shareholders that these businesses are not going to deteriorate any further.”

And he says Mr Snowball needs to come up with a low-risk strategy, accentuate it and promise it to the market.

While the new Suncorp CEO’s Oxford education and 17 years in the British Army will no doubt be useful in myriad ways, it’s the experience he gained in 19 years at UK insurance giant Aviva that the powerbrokers in Brisbane want to see.

A former Executive Chairman of Norwich Union, Mr Snowball was overlooked for promotion to CEO at Aviva in 2007 and shortly after left the company. Most recently, he led a failed attempt to take over the Royal Bank of Scotland’s extensive insurance assets.

Mr Snowball has the experience and the vision to turn Suncorp around. Its insurance assets are performing well, but like Mr Wilkins he will have some sceptical shareholders to win over with plain speaking and plenty of vision.

The (we’ll only say it once) hothouse environment he finds himself in may seem unfamiliar, but it’s obvious there’s plenty of financial and personal incentive to make Suncorp perform and get its share price back up where it should be.

Until he does, there’s always going to be a risk that a rival insurer like QBE could buy it out from under him.