Thank you, Madam Chair and committee members, for having us here today.
My name is Lesley Lawrence. I am the senior vice-president overseeing the financing and consulting activities in Ontario of the Business Development Bank of Canada. I have also championed the bank's initiatives to support women entrepreneurs. I would also like to introduce my colleague, Michelle Scarborough, who is the managing director for strategic investments and women in tech at BDC.
Before I touch on women entrepreneurs, I would like to share a few notes about BDC. We are Canada's only bank dedicated exclusively to entrepreneurs and are a financially sustainable crown corporation. We provide support to small- and medium-sized businesses in the form of loans, investments, and advice. We do not provide grants or subsidies, rather we support viable and creditworthy businesses.
One path toward achieving economic security can be entrepreneurship, and as you know, women are changing the face of entrepreneurship. Their businesses contribute greatly to Canada's economy—$148 billion annually, according to RBC Economics.
I want to share with you a few of those faces of women-led companies that BDC supports, like Caitlin MacGregor of Plum, who has a SaaS, or software as a service platform, that removes the bias in hiring to help employers pinpoint the best applicants for jobs. There's also Jodi Glover of Real Tech, who designs and manufactures water quality analyzers that detect common impurities in real time to improve global water quality. Fairware is another company that creates sustainable custom promotional materials. They are passionate advocates for changing the way business is done by sourcing not only sustainable materials, but also ethically sourced materials, and they also happen to be a B corp-certified company, or beneficial corporation. However, as you've heard throughout your study, women are not only under-represented in entrepreneurship, but also face distinct challenges when it comes to starting and growing a business. At BDC we are continually working to improve how we support women entrepreneurs to ensure their full participation in the Canadian economy.
Let me take you back a couple of years to where we started the women entrepreneur initiative. In 2014, BDC created a women entrepreneur task force to determine potential gaps between the needs of women entrepreneurs and our services, and then put forward recommendations on how to improve that support. This led to the launch of our women entrepreneur initiative in March 2015, which would be threefold: first, we committed to increasing our lending to at least $700 million in loans to majority-owned women businesses; second, we earmarked $150,000 for sponsorship for specific programs, events, and initiatives focused on women entrepreneurs; and third, we would create a pan-Canadian delivery and support system, a network of people within BDC to support women entrepreneurs.
Where are we today? I'm very pleased to report that at the end of two years of the three-year initiative this past March, we reached 89% of our $700-million target for women-owned businesses. That means we've lent nearly $621 million since March 2015, and will definitely exceed our $700-million budget, with less than one year of the initiative remaining. But rest assured, we are not slowing our pace at all.
Perhaps even more impressive is how many more women entrepreneurs we now support. Over these same two years, the number of women-led businesses supported by BDC has grown by 27%, from 3,300 to just over 4,200. The 27% growth of the women entrepreneur portfolio outperforms the growth of BDC's overall portfolio for the same period, which was 22%.
We know that we can't go at this alone, and that is also why we partner with different organizations already doing great work in the space, so we can improve our collective impact to women entrepreneurs.
We partner closely with Futurpreneur Canada, whom I know you've also heard from in the context of this study. By working with Futurpreneur, we can help extend the amount of capital available to young entrepreneurs.
Another great partner is the Women's Enterprise Centre of Manitoba, whose CEO I believe you heard from earlier this month. Yesterday we announced our partnership with them, whereby we can match up to 100% of the money that the Women’s Enterprise Centre of Manitoba lends to women entrepreneurs. This provides more capital to women and helps them scale up their business.
In skills development, we also partner with CPA Canada and Community Futures Development Corporation to deliver financial literacy workshops across Canada, which also play an important role in confidence building for women entrepreneurs.
Futurpreneur pairs each entrepreneur with a mentor, which we all know to be crucial to their success. We also recently worked with Futurpreneur on an awareness campaign through social media, which promoted entrepreneurship as a viable career option and shone a spotlight on successful positive women entrepreneur role models.
As you may know, we also recently stepped up our commitment to women entrepreneurs by dedicating an additional $50 million in growth and venture capital for women-led tech firms. That said, we know it can be particularly hard for women starting tech companies or growing them. That is why we launched this program and recently hired Michelle to run it. She is an accomplished serial entrepreneur and has been a pioneer in the venture capital industry in Canada over the last 20 years. As you may know, in venture capital, simply having a woman investor on the team increases the likelihood of a woman-led business receiving an investment. To date, of the companies we've invested in through the venture acceleration program, 15% are women-led.
To conclude, be it lack of access to capital, developing networks or mentorship needs, women entrepreneurs continue to face many challenges in the business world. However, we hope that we can continue to be part of the solution. Our aim is to be a world-leading financial institution for women business owners, and Michelle, and I, and others will always remain open to your questions and feedback.
Thank you very much for your attention today.