A record home lending push helped lift full-year banking profit by 10.7 per cent at Australia's largest mutual - or customer owned - financial institution.  The CUA Group, which includes insurance and health subsidiaries in addition to its main business of retail banking, posted a full-year net profit after tax of A$48.8 million, relatively unchanged from its previous annual result.  The group experienced strong balance sheet growth, with consolidated assets up 16.3 per cent to just shy of $12 billion. CUA banking operations reeled in NPAT of $48.8 million, up 10.7 per cent, with lending up 55 per cent, boosted by a record $3.35 billion in new CUA loans issued during FY15. Meanwhile retail deposits were up 14.7 per cent to $7.8 billion, helped in part by the 8,600-plus new customers for the year. CUA's new chief executive, Rob Goudswaard, who took over from Chris Whitehead in February, singled out home loan growth, which grew at 2.5 times system throughout the year, as "a real highlight". He noted that the increase came mainly through growth in owner-occupier housing finance, and most of it through CUA's own in-house systems and brokers.  Despite the growth in CUA's loan book, its impairment charges fell from $5.8 million in FY14 to $3.0 million in FY15. CUA said this reflected the high quality and low risk of the loan book growth.  Goudswaard said CUA's $60 million core banking platform had enabled the mutual to deliver several new products in FY15, adding to the lending and deposit growth. For instance, in the case of home loans, both staff and customers can go directly online and data will upload straight through to populate documentation and aid lending decisions. "The new system will allow straight through processing and streamlining for home loan applications, cutting the time by two thirds, to less than seven days processing," said Goudswaard. The same applies to the very bureaucratic process currently in place for refinancing and top ups. Another area with potential is health insurance.  "We've been in the health business for over 40 years but the difference is that in 2014 and early 2015 we made a big investment in people and systems and in selling," said Goudswaard.  "The good news is that we saw a large increase in revenue growth. The bad news is that to deal with this structurally we had to move to become a for-profit health insurance provider."  As only eight per cent of CUA's banking customers are with CUA Health, this represents an obvious cross sell opportunity. CUA's focus for FY16 will be on continued investment in CUA's foundations and systems, long-term sustainability of the organisation and on remaining relevant to both existing and future customers.