Well, I think we are different. We're committed to member service, we're committed to working with our members, and we're committed to the communities in which we're active and in which we're located. The ethic or ethos is to work with the members. We know them. We're traditional lenders in that pure sense, that loans are made on character. Deposits are sourced in the community and then loaned back into the community. So there is a big difference.
What I am looking at are the aggregate numbers. When I look at the aggregate numbers, I see an increase in lending across our system in the fourth quarter of 2008; it was an increase of 1.6%. That was actually the time when the market was dropping. It was when we really hit the decline. What is interesting, when I look back at the numbers, is that it is higher than in the first quarter of 2008. The second and third quarter increases were higher than 1.6%, but there's no real evidence of a decline in the fourth quarter of 2008. Our numbers for the first quarter of 2009 aren't out, but I would be very surprised, from anything I hear anecdotally across the system, if we were to see a decline across the system.
What's notable—and I mentioned the Canadian business owners strategy—is that we've really committed to small and medium-sized business lending. Two years ago, we initiated the first national advertising campaign in the credit union system in over 25 years, directed at increasing our presence and increasing the awareness of the services that credit unions can provide to small and medium-sized business. We had done some calculations and had seen that we actually had a fair share of that market, but the level of awareness of it was very limited.
So we got the system together and said this is something we need to address. We launched the campaign, with a lot of other parts to it, including a network for small and medium-sized businesspeople to connect with each other, and training for our own credit union staff to sensitize them to the needs of small and medium-sized business. We're going to keep that going. We're not ramping it; we're going to keep it going and keep promoting our services to small and medium-sized business.
So I'm confident that our numbers will increase. We certainly haven't seen anything that suggests that, on an aggregate basis, there's been a decrease.
I would like to ask Mr. Luimes to comment, though, because he's a real on-the-ground lender and can give you that perspective.