While the strategic focus at Westpac remains on strengthening the group's balance sheet and improving productivity in an environment of weak credit demand, the head of the group's Australian operations believes there are pockets of opportunity where the bank can find growth.Westpac's Australian Financial Services chief executive, Brian Hartzer, said his division, which includes Westpac retail and business banking, St George Bank and BT Financial Group, was underweight in SME lending and retail deposits in Victoria.Speaking at an AFS strategy update yesterday, Hartzer said: "The economy is not high growth and credit demand is low. But there is growth if you slice and dice the opportunities."He said St George Bank was well below its "natural" share in the SME market."We have a lot of SMEs coming through the St George branches each day, but we are not converting that traffic into relationships," he said.In business banking, Westpac has identified a number of "tier one" industries that it is targeting. These include agribusiness, mining and health services.In wealth management, BT has developed a new "prime of life" strategy. It will focus its attention on people aged 45 and over, moving towards retirement and thinking more about their superannuation, savings and insurance needs.Hartzer said one of the group's real strengths was its ability to achieve wealth penetration by selling investment and insurance products to its banking customers. Any moves to grow the business will be tempered by a continuation of the bank's conservative approach to its balance sheet.Hartzer said: "We will continue to grow our deposits ahead of market, so we can deal with whatever the financial markets throw at us."