I think there are still opportunities to offer low-cost products, and I heard earlier the idea of needing to confer with the bankers and perhaps do some price fixing to make sure you're not too competitive. I would submit that you can't have it both ways. Around the globe internationally, in the U.K. it's 25% of sales for the post, 36% of revenues in France, 67% in Italy, and 71% with the Swiss.
I know there are going to be some challenges when you enter into a new business and you are a disrupter, but certainly the payday loan companies have found low-cost ways. In Hamilton they have an over-saturation. So when you talk about market disrupters, what's the market? We know this is a multi-billion dollar market to enter into and the pie is massive. There are overhead costs. If there's a compelling case for expansion, whether it's in small retail markets, where you have your shoppers and some of your franchisees, which are ubiquitous across urban centres, or in your rural neighbourhoods, where you already have the infrastructure....
I was at a conference this past year where I heard an indigenous community talking about the need for banking in some of our territories having that infrastructure present, and also having some challenges around addresses. Where we were fighting community boxes in our neighbourhoods, they were saying they would love to have them.
There's a real international case for this, and I feel the task force dismissed it almost wholesale. I would say, in the task force's defence, that they were presented with looking at solutions for which there were business plans. In their tight timeline they were not asked to develop new business plans. I think there are notes on this topic where if you're going to explore any of these options, business plans would need to be developed. It seems we can look to other countries for those plans.