First of all, I think there is a big opportunity, as Katleen has said very clearly, in microinsurance. Some Canadian insurance companies could join hands with microfinance organizations that have the field presence. Swiss Re, partnering with Fonkoze, literally, after much preparation, insured 60,000 families across Haiti against catastrophic disaster, so if an earthquake, God forbid, or a major flood were to happen tomorrow in Haiti, Fonkoze's clients would be insured. That takes private sector talent and players and expertise on the ground.
I mentioned a loan guarantee program. In our case, in Grameen Foundation, we joined hands with Citibank and nine families who collectively contributed or pledged, in the case of default, $31 million, and created a loan guarantee pool that leveraged hundreds of millions of dollars without a single default. Citibank got new clients or deepened its relationships with existing clients. It brought local banks in, and it brought capital to microfinance. Citibank earned money on every transaction, although maybe only a tiny amount. Also, Grameen Foundation covers 70% of our costs through the fees paid by the microfinance groups. At the end of the day, the U.S. government, USAID, slow-moving though they can be at times, actually put $32 million into the guarantee pool to match the private sector pledges from our donor guarantors.
Well, we can't keep up with the demand. There's nothing stopping a Canadian bank from partnering with high net worth Canadian individuals who want to do something more than just donate their money, and with CIDA, to come up with some facility. We welcome competition. There are a lot of local banks that just need to get that feeling of an international agency sharing the risk with them and giving them confidence in a financial service provider that's probably off their radar but probably has a high degree of expertise in serving the poor.