Measuring BDC’s impact on its clients

As Canada’s development bank, BDC offers financing and consulting services with the goal of accelerating the success of entrepreneurs. While clients are surveyed on an annual basis regarding the value they perceive in the services provided, BDC wanted an independent, quantifiable assessment of whether its financing and consulting services actually helped accelerate the success of entrepreneurs. To do this, BDC commissioned Statistics Canada to measure its impact on clients between 2001 and 2010. Statistics Canada developed a longitudinal database of BDC clients (the “study group”) and non-clients (the “comparison group”) and then compared their performance in each year over the period. Both groups were similar in terms of age, employment, assets, debt ratio, profit margin, revenues, industry and geographic location. Statistics Canada used statistical regressions to test a series of hypotheses (see Appendix) related to BDC’s influence on the business performance of its clients. It used five performance indicators: clients growth in sales, employment, productivity and profits, as well as their survival rates over the years after receiving BDC financing and/or consulting services. The statistical analysis revealed that BDC had a positive impact on all five performance indicators, particularly when both financing and consulting services were used

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