 Maximal left ideal

A maximal left ideal is a proper left ideal contained in no larger proper left ideal. In a unital Banach algebra it is norm closed: its closure is a left ideal, and if that closure were the entire algebra it would contain elements of $L$ within distance less than one of $1$, hence invertible by the Neumann series. A proper left ideal contains no invertible element. The quotient $A/L$ is consequently a quotient Banach space and a simple module.