22 August 2012 6:58am

Wide Bay Australia is looking to lift the sales efforts of its branch network, as new levels of lending only kept pace with asset run-off over the last half.

However, this was at least an improvement on the first half of the financial year, when receivables declined.

"The branch network basically went to sleep on us in 2011, but it picked up in the last six months," the managing director, Ron Hancock, said yesterday.

He said Wide Bay remained cautious about sourcing loans from brokers, though it does do so for some of its lending, 20 per cent of which is outside of...