Business Services Industry

Unisys and SOFTPRO Team to Offer Improved Efficiency and Fraud Protection in Financial Industry

Business Wire, June 23, 1999

BLUE BELL, Pa.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 23, 1999--

Unisys Integrates SOFTPRO'S SignPlus Automated Signature

Verification Products Into Financial Solutions Portfolio

Unisys Corporation and SOFTPRO GmbH & Co. KG of Boeblingen, Germany, today announced a business alliance to reduce fraud in the financial services industry and improve payment systems efficiency.

Under the worldwide alliance, Unisys will market SOFTPRO's SignPlus signature verification products as part of its financial services portfolio.

SignPlus electronically compares signatures from payment documents against the account's reference signatures, including automatic mandate checking. By automating the signature verification process, financial institutions can gain faster transaction processing, increased efficiency, improved customer service and a higher level of fraud protection.

Check fraud and counterfeiting are among the fastest-growing problems affecting financial institutions producing estimated annual losses of $10 billion, according to the National Check Fraud Center. As paper- and check-based payment systems continue to dominate the payment infrastructure, automatic signature verification has become an essential tool in the fight against fraud.

The Unisys and SOFTPRO combined solution allows financial institutions to significantly increase the number of items verified without increasing labor costs.

Unisys brings to market an integrated suite of retail delivery solutions for the front office and payment systems for the back office. Integrating these solutions with SOFTPRO will give financial services staff automatic, on-screen access to signature cards to verify check authenticity as checks are presented at the teller window.

In the back office, Unisys/SOFTPRO automates signature verification between documents and their respective reference signatures to help decrease payment on fraudulent items.

"SignPlus signature verification products are a natural extension to Unisys payment solutions," said Joseph Brown, vice president, Unisys Payment Solutions Worldwide. "The SignPlus technology complements the Unisys initiative for deploying best-of-class solutions that reduce costs, control risks and improve customer service."

Unisys will offer SOFTPRO's SignPlus products to augment several of its retail delivery, check processing and document management solutions.

SignPlus can be integrated with Unisys VisualImpact check processing solution, VisualE payment processing platform, VisualRemittance image-based remittance and lockbox solution, Item Processing System (IPS)/Image Check Processing System (ICPS) solutions, VisualArchive scalable payment archive solution, FBA Navigator front-office solution and InfoImage Folder document management solution.

"Our partnership with Unisys extends our channel into international markets," said Heinz Reschke, CEO, SOFTPRO GmbH & Co. KG. "We can now bring the benefits and strengths of SignPlus technology to Unisys customers worldwide."

About SOFTPRO

SOFTPRO Software Professional GmbH & Co. KG focuses on providing state-of-the-art fraud detection and fraud prevention solutions to the financial services market as well as to forensic experts. SignPlus is the world's leading product family for signature verification.

Every day, more than 1.5 million payment documents are successfully verified by SignPlus at banks, worldwide. Banks like ABN AMRO, ING, Deutsche Bank, HypoVereinsbank, Credit Suisse, Banque Paribas, Oversea-Chinese Banking Corporation, Bank Bumiputra Malaysia, and Royal Bank of Canada place their trust in SignPlus.

SOFTPRO is headquartered in Boeblingen, in the southwestern part of Germany. For more information on the company, access the SOFTPRO home page at www.softpro.de, the SignPlus home page at www.signplus.com or the home page of recently founded SOFTPRO North America at www.softpro-na.com.

About Unisys

Unisys is more than 33,000 employees helping customers in 100 countries apply information technology to solve their business problems.

Unisys solutions are based on a broad portfolio of global information services including electronic business, systems integration including custom and "repeatable" application solutions, outsourcing, Microsoft Windows NT services, network services, and multivendor maintenance and support, coupled with enterprise-class servers and associated middleware, software and storage.

Repeatable solutions are focused on key vertical markets including financial services, transportation, telecommunications, government, publishing, and other commercial markets.

The company is headquartered in Blue Bell, in the Greater Philadelphia area. For more information on the company, access the Unisys home page on the World Wide Web at www.unisys.com. Investor information can be found at www.unisys.com/investor.> Unisys is a registered trademark of Unisys Corporation. All other brands and products referenced herein are acknowledged to be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders.