Westpac will pursue higher levels of growth in home lending and small business finance in 2014, ending a two-year strategy of limiting growth while it built a stronger funding profile and improved asset quality.Westpac chief executive Gail Kelly said conditions were right for a return to higher growth. Westpac is expecting demand for business finance and mortgages to pick up next year.Speaking at the release of the bank's 2012/13 financial report yesterday, Kelly said the bank was well positioned for "sustainable growth".Kelly said: "We are tilting more to growth as we go into 2014. We will not achieve that at the expense of returns. We will maintain our discipline."Westpac has had below-system growth in home loans for the past two years. According to APRA figures, system mortgage portfolios have grown by nine per cent in the two years to September, while Westpac's book has grown by four per cent.Over that period, Westpac's mortgage share has fallen from 26.6 per cent to 25.2 per cent.Kelly said the goal next year would be to match system growth in home loans. She said the bank's share of the SME business was "lower than it should be" and there was room to grow in that market as well.She said the bank had a number of plans to pick up the momentum. It will increase "customer consideration" (spend more on marketing), increase the "sales intensity" in branches and business banking centres, and it will increase the number of "home finance managers". It is also giving the back office a spring clean. Kelly said that time to approval, time to settlement and time to prepare valuation would all be reduced.The bank's simplification project, which was launched earlier this year with the aim of stripping out unproductive processes and redundant products, will also help the bank achieve its new growth targets. Kelly said a couple of the benefits of the project were that there was less paper in the system and the amount of re-working was also being reduced.Westpac's chief financial officer, Phil Coffey, said more of the bank's investment would be directed towards growth. It is putting video-conferencing facilities into                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     its St George Bank business centres to make it easier for business customers to have meetings with business bankers. And it will continue with the revival of its regional brand, Bank of Melbourne.Kelly said she was confident that the bank was positioned for "sustainable growth". The bank's funding position has improved. Since 2010, the ratio of customer deposits to loans has increased from 58.7 per cent to 71.4 per cent. At the same time, the bank's wholesale term debt issuance has fallen from $43 billion, in 2010, to $22 billion this year. And its asset quality is strong: since 2010 the ratio of stressed assets to total committed exposures has fallen from 3.2 per cent to 1.6 per cent.Kelly said: "The loans we write today are of the same quality. There is no deterioration in standards."In addition, the bank has a strong deposit inflow. According to