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* Pretax profit up 2.3 percent to 133.7 million pounds
* To consider acquisitions, no comment on Aldermore
* Mortgage broker service gets 300 mln pounds ofapplications (Adds detail on possible acquisitions)
By Aashika Jain and Matt Scuffham
Feb 25 (Reuters) - Britain's TSB Banking Group Plc said it would consider acquisitions to accelerate its expansionand reported a 2.3 percent rise in pretax profit for 2014 as itpicked up customers from established rivals.
TSB would not comment directly on speculation it approachedthe owners of British banking newcomer Aldermore about apossible bid earlier this year.
The bank has also been linked with a possible purchase ofmortgage portfolios from Britain's 'bad bank', which is windingdown the loans of Northern Rock and Bradford & Bingley.
"If they are the right assets at the right price and theymake sense for our shareholders, then we will look at them,"Chief Executive Paul Pester told reporters on Wednesday.
British regulators are keen for new banks to challengeBritain's big four lenders -- Lloyds, Royal Bank of Scotland, Barclays and HSBC -- which providethree-quarters of the country's personal current accounts.
TSB, which became Britain's seventh biggest lender when hived off from Lloyds Banking Group last June, said ithad taken an 8.4 percent share of all new personal currentaccounts opened over the past year with almost 500,000 new TSBbank accounts set up in 2014.
The bank wants to lift its share of the personal currentaccount market to 6 percent from a figure of 4.2 percent when itlisted on the London Stock Exchange.
TSB said it had received more than 300 million pounds ($465million) worth of applications to date for its mortgage range itopened to brokers in January.
Pretax profit rose to 133.7 million pounds for the yearended Dec. 31 from 130.7 million pounds in 2013.
Shares in TSB have fallen 10 percent since their listing onthe London Stock Exchange. They were trading up 0.7 percent at263 pence at 1325 GMT.
Lloyds sold a 38.5 percent stake in TSB through a stockmarket flotation of the business in last June followed by thesale of a further 11.5 percent shareholding in last September.
Lloyds was forced by European regulators to sell the 631branches which now form TSB as a condition of receiving stateaid during the financial crisis. It must sell the whole of TSBby the end of 2015 and is free to start selling more shares inthe company from today, Wednesday. ($1 = 0.6450 pounds) (Reporting by Aashika Jain in Bengaluru and Matt Scuffham inLondon; Editing by Keith Weir and Louise Heavens)
