BOSTON — Harland Financial Solutions' new Deposit Benchmarking Database was used by Aite Group to assess the deposit performance of a number of credit unions, thrifts and banks ranging in size from $100 million to $50 billion. Among the think firm's findings was the considerable impact of small businesses on deposit growth. Although the role of non-consumer deposits (composed primarily of small business deposits) in driving deposit growth at a number of institutions was not clearly shown in public data from such sources as the FDIC and NCUA, Aite Group says, that role was considerable in 2006, according to the MCIF data mined by the HFS database tools. Among benchmark participants, consumer deposits grew an average of 4.6% in 2006, while non-consumer deposits grew 18.7%. And while organic growth in consumer deposits was only 0.5% in 2006, non-consumer organic deposit growth was 10.1% (Aite Group defines organic growth as the net change in existing consumer and non-consumer relationships and their balances.)