Heritage Bank suffered a fall in loan approvals and total assets during the year to June but says it returned to growth in the second half of the year.Heritage issued a media release yesterday with details of its financial results for 2015/16 but did not issue a full financial report.Loan approvals fell 3.3 per cent to A$1.8 billion in the year to June. Total consolidated assets fell from $8.56 billion to $8.44 billion.Retail deposits grew 6.05 per cent to $5.2 billion.Heritage Bank chief executive Peter Lock said loan approvals picked up in the second half, resulting in annualised growth of 7.1 per cent in the mortgage book for the six months.Lock said: "Our strategy is definitely to boost our loan volumes in coming years and to grow the business as a whole. Our success in achieving higher growth in the latter half of the year illustrates how well we can perform when we align our efforts towards a key strategic goal."Heritage's unaudited net profit was $36.1 million - an increase of 7.5 per cent over the 2014/15 result.Its capital adequacy ratio at the end of June was 13.9 per cent.