Charter One Increases Uptime, Improves Customer Service With Gasper Corporation's ATM Management

Business Wire, May 14, 2002

Business Editors

DAYTON, Ohio--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 14, 2002

Gasper Manager improves management of Charter One's network

of over 900 self-service terminals

Gasper Corporation announced today that Charter One Bank, one of the nation's 30 largest financial institutions, has been able to increase uptime by 8% since implementing Gasper Manager, the industry's leading management system for self-service terminals and automated teller machines. Managing a network of over nine hundred ATMs, the system has enabled Charter One to not only show a measurable improvement in ATM uptime, but also to improve customer service.

"Before implementing Gasper Manager, we were watching the ATMs in house on a stratus system. The branches and off-sites would call the service provider directly if their machines went down," said Linda Mills, Vice President ATM Management of Charter One. Gasper Manager allows proactive management and automatic service dispatching, ensuring that even remote teller machines remain in service. Keeping ATM machines running and stocked means that consumers have more reliable access to their self-service banking needs, and are less likely to migrate to a competitor's machine.

Keeping a system of close to a thousand self-service terminals -- some of which are located completely offsite from bank branches -- requires a robust management solution. "I had prior experience with Gasper Manager, and new we needed to centralize the management and serviceability of our ATMs," said Mills. "We are happy. We've seen good improvements in our customer service."

Gasper Corporation, a wholly-owned subsidiary of NCR, continues to provide innovative solutions for financial corporations such as Charter One, including the recently announced Vantage(TM) solution, which provide a suite of new applications that utilize the Internet and relational database technology to effectively manage self-service banking initiatives.

"We're very pleased to be able to include Charter One in our growing family of leading banks and financial institutions," said Stuart Bale of Gasper Corporation. "When two leaders enter into a business partnership, results are inevitable. For Charter One, uptime and customer service have already improved; at Gasper, we have gained a valuable new perspective from Charter One, which will help us to continue building what our customers want: powerful solutions to real self-service terminal issues."

About Charter One

Charter One Bank is part of Charter One Financial (NYSE:CF), which has approximately $38 billion in total assets, making it one of the 30 largest bank holding companies in the country. The Bank has 456 branch locations in Ohio, Michigan, New York, Illinois, Massachusetts, and Vermont. The branch locations operate under the Charter One name in all areas except in Michigan, where the Bank is known as First Federal of Michigan. The Company's diverse product set includes: consumer banking, indirect auto finance, commercial leasing, business lending, commercial real estate lending, mortgage banking, and retail investment products. For additional information, including press releases and investor presentations, investors are directed to Charter One's web site: www.charterone.com .

About Gasper Corporation

Gasper Corporation, a leading provider of Self-Service management software, offers comprehensive solutions that are specifically tailored to solve Self-Service management problems. The company's solutions monitor Self-Service Terminals (SSTs) and manage the entire SST support process to maximize SST availability, profitability and customer satisfaction for SST networks worldwide. Headquartered in Dayton, Ohio, the company's solutions are used to manage more than 170,000 SSTs worldwide. Visit the Gasper Corporation web site at www.gasper-corp.com.