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Although Toronto-based Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) continues to be the biggest player in serving Canadian small and mid-sized enterprises (SME), its dominance has decreased since the turn of the century, according to a new report from the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB) released on Tuesday.

RBC had 18.5% of the domestic SME market in 2015, but that’s down from 21.2% in 2000. Toronto-based Bank of Nova Scotia has the second-highest market share of 17.9% and experienced an increase of 6.7 percentage points between 2000 and 2015, which is the biggest jump among all of the financial services firms in the survey. (Some of the business owners surveyed for this report may be participants in a small-business program offered by Scotiabank in partnership with the CFIB, notes the organization in its report.)

“Small business owners rely on their banking partners, but they also have very special banking needs,” says Dan Kelly, president of the CFIB, in a statement. “It’s interesting to see the evolution of SME market share over the years as these changes don’t happen by accident. Clearly, some banks have focused on small firms while others may have pursued other types of clients.”

Toronto-based TD Canada Trust rounds out the top three with a market share of 16.5%, up by 4.4 percentage points from its result in 2000. In addition, Canadian credit unions, which were grouped together, also saw a jump in market share to 11.5% from 8.7% in 2000.

Bank of Montreal (BMO) and Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC), both based in Toronto, join RBC in experiencing a decline in their market share. BMO covered 10.7% of Canadian SMEs in 2015, a drop of 1.9 percentage points from 2000, and CIBC covers 9.8% of the market, which is 3.5 percentage points lower than its result in 2000.

On a regional basis, Lévis, Que.-based Desjardins Group controls 42.6% of the total SME market in Quebec; Edmonton-based Alberta Treasury Branches (a.k.a ATB Financial) holds the largest market share in Alberta, at 19.7%; and credit unions have significant market share in Manitoba and Saskatchewan, with 39.2% of SME market in both provinces. Credit unions are also very popular in British Columbia, where they cover 23% of SMEs.

The findings of this report are based on the 11,400 responses to a CFIB survey received between September and November 2015.

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