The core banking division of Credit Union Australia had a rough year, one softened by a surge in lending for personal loans.CUA said its banking business "achieved a full-year net profit of A$49.7 million, down six per cent" from the year to June 2016.At the group level, net profit lifted eight per cent to $55.9 million, with earnings underpinned by the mutual's health insurance business.CUA said it level of lending for personal loans shot up 38 per cent to $257 million.In its core mortgage business, the pricing antics of major banks and the macroprudential measures of APRA produced mixed outcomes for CUA.Lending volumes "improved in the second half of the financial year, with A$1.6 billion in new lending" up from "$1.2 billion in lending for the first half, when CUA was impacted by extremely competitive market conditions," the credit union said.Capital adequacy increased slightly from 14.24 per cent to 14.28 per cent over the year. ?The perennial question of whether CUA will ditch its credit union label and switch to mutual bank status is one still resolved in the negative, at least for now.Rob Goudswaard, chief executive of CUA, said yesterday that "we haven't seen enough evidence to spend the money required to change the livery to become a bank."I haven't found anything in our research to encourage bank status, though we have found not many who know what a mutual is."