Certainly, and thank you.
Over 80%, possibly closer to 90%, of the companies we work with in a year are SMEs, the small ones probably being around 80%. The number of medium-sized companies is a fairly small relative to the very large number of small companies that use our services.
Primarily the service they use is what we call accounts receivable insurance. When they have a sale, they may not know the buyer all that well; they're shipping more or less in blind faith, and they may wait 60 to 90 days, sometimes longer, for payment. Effectively, the small company then has to give credit to their buyer during that period while they're waiting for the money, and they don't have the money available to make their next order.
If they approach EDC, EDC can check out the foreign buyer and insure that receivable for a commercially oriented fee. That, of course, takes the risk off the table. The company then is liable for only 10% of that outstanding amount should something go wrong. EDC will pay them 90% of the value of that contract if the buyer fails to pay, and then EDC will go after that buyer to recoup the money if possible. Meanwhile, the company can go to its bank with that insurance policy and receive credit from its bank, because that was an unassured piece of collateral at that point. You can see that the triangular relationship between the exporter, EDC, and their bank works well to help them grow their business.
In terms of overlap with TCS, in the very basic sense there's complete overlap, because they're exactly the same companies. A trade commissioner would ask if they knew about EDC's service; conversely, we'd be suggesting they talk to the trade commissioner down the street or in the next building to grow their sales. There's a very collaborative effort, but what we actually deliver to the company is quite different. It's carefully identified who does what for them.
I hope that gives you a cleaner picture of what we're doing at that small end. As a small company—and I mean really small—you can insure as small a transaction as you like, while if you were to go to a private sector insurer, you would normally be up against having to do a certain amount of business per year or that kind of thing. This is where EDC is filling a gap in the market space.