Mr. Chairman, I thank the honourable member for the question.
Let me go first to small and medium-sized enterprises, because they actually form the core of EDC's client base. In fact, more than 90% of EDC's overall customer base, which is approximately 7,000 customers, are small and medium-sized enterprises, and have been for some time.
In terms of aggregate support, last year we supported some $15 billion of insurance and financing just at the small and medium-sized level. So it is, and will continue to be, a very important component during my term of presidency.
What we have done to increase our reach, and ultimately to increase the size of the customer base, is to restructure the organization. Actually, during my interim presidency I commenced what we call an integration project, in which we were now separating the business development function from our underwriting function, and we were actually moving more people into the business development side of the business. We increased the size of our complement by over 50 people.
We have increased the number of people who are out there in the regions, actually. We have also introduced dedicated account management, not just at the large customer end but at the mid-market and at the small end of the market. So we're really increasing our overall customer interface capability.
The other aspect that we're increasing is our delivery channels through the financial institutions. Over 50% of EDC's products and services are delivered through Canadian financial institutions, or where the financial institution is actually the beneficiary of the coverage. And of course they have a tremendous reach out there to their client base. So we are working to tap that delivery channel as well as our own direct delivery channels in order to be able to reach out to more of those customers. Some of that will be a function of actually designing products specifically for each bank and/or combining that with technology to be able to reach those players more effectively.