You're absolutely right that in Newfoundland we have a higher market share than in other parts of the country.
About a year and a half ago, we embarked on something called an increased reach and visibility program, where we were to look at the market penetration in other markets to see how we can increase that to have more impact.
In some parts of the country, the market penetration is as low as 3% for our target SME market. That means 97% of SMEs don't know about us. That's a shame. We do client surveys. In 2015, we surveyed 7,345 clients; 62% of them said they were very satisfied and 34% said they were satisfied. That's 96% that were satisfied or higher. That's unheard of in commercial lending.
I think it's a really good thing that these 97% of entrepreneurs that haven't dealt with us have to hear about us. There's a myth among entrepreneurs that haven't dealt with us that we're very bureaucratic and slow, and it's the 3% that deal with us that realize we're a very good organization to deal with.
We've embarked on this increased reach and visibility to have more impact in areas where we don't have a lot of impact now. That involves partnering with more rural agencies to share space and to have satellite branches. It also involves doing some advertising and sponsoring events. It involves hiring people who have specific market skills that we didn't have before.
For example, we now have an automotive team focused on the automotive sector who have special skills that are specific to the automotive industry. We have a food and beverage team specific to food and beverage manufacturing, so we can have more impact with that manufacturing industry. We have an aerospace team looking at aerospace opportunities to make sure we have more impact with that. We've targeted some key manufacturing industries and hired experts to increase our reach and visibility.