Bank of Queensland's earnings are recovering from what turned out to be only a minor dip thanks to the credit shock, not that BOQ's earnings were anything special in the first place.The recovery in BOQ's earnings are also not as clear cut as the bank sought to portray in documents outlining its profit for the year to August 2009.BOQ has, however, avoided the degree of the decline in earnings that has affected its most comparable banks (Suncorp and Bendigo) and profit is coming back, in large part due to the continued investment in its own network, as well as the takeover of a couple of building societies.Underlying profit for the bank increased 13 per cent to $259 million over the year to August 2009. The underlying profit for the half year jumped by more than 80 per cent to $167 million.Cash net profit "normalised" by the bank, and counting many core costs as one-offs, the bank asserted to be up by more than 20 per cent. This, however, is a carry over from the normalisation of cash profit rort from the first half, with no new gimmicks introduced in the second half.That leaves the statutory profit as the best measure of net profit for BOQ this year, and that increased by only two per cent to $141 million.Over the second half, the statutory net profit more than doubled to $95 million.Improving interest margins, on top of above system lending growth is the chief driver of the improving underlying profit. While the net interest margin fell 11 basis points over the full year it increased by seven basis points over the second half to be 1.59 per cent.Lending increased at 1.8 times system while deposit growth matched system.Credit quality indicators are mixed, with impaired assets almost doubling, and equal to 20 basis points. Asset quality is getting better on the retail side but worsening on the business side, and consistent with trends elsewhere.