i-flex Solutions Wins Core Banking Bid for the North Carolina Department of State Treasurer; FLEXCUBE to Replace Legacy System to Meet Growing Needs of North Carolina State Agencies

Business Wire, Sept 3, 2002

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 3, 2002

i-flex solutions, a leading global provider of integrated IT solutions for the financial services industry, today announced that North Carolina Department of State Treasurer (NCDST) selected i-flex's flagship solution FLEXCUBE, to replace its core banking legacy system, following a highly competitive bid and evaluation process.

The NCDST will deploy nine modules of the FLEXCUBE that will run on HP servers featuring Intel's PIII Xeon processors. These modules include, among others, Cash Management, Nostro Reconciliation, Funds Transfer, Deposits and Teller Support. FLEXCUBE will help the NCDST expedite and manage the flow of money collected and disbursed across all 800 state agencies and will allow NCDST, and the agencies it supports, to access account information over the Internet through i-flex's FLEXCUBE@ Internet Banking solution. NCDST will also establish and extend its relationship banking capabilities through FLEXCUBE's sophisticated Customer Information System.

"NCDST conducted a highly competitive evaluation process where a number of vendors were considered for this critical project. We concluded that i-flex's robust product suite and corporate commitment to meet the needs of NCDST today and in the future made them the most logical choice," said Bill Golden, CIO and Deputy State Treasurer for NCDST. "Having i-flex solutions as our partner is an assurance to all North Carolina state agencies that we will continue to increase efficiencies and reduce costs of banking throughout the state."

"Our expertise in deploying core banking solutions in any number of diverse financial markets allows us to win in highly competitive opportunities, such as NCDST, by applying a combination of our best practices, our award winning products and our customized services to provide tailored and unique solutions for our prospects," said R. Ravisankar, CEO of i-flex solutions. "The decision of NCDST to deploy FLEXCUBE is further validation of our long-standing mission to be the IT provider of choice for financial services organizations anywhere in the world including government agencies in North America."

To implement the core banking system at the NCDST, i-flex is partnering with Keane, Inc. Keane has significant experience in implementing technology solutions for the State of North Carolina and a sound understanding of its practices and procedures. Keane will provide services in process flow analysis, building interfaces to third party systems, testing and quality assurance as well as end user training.

With assets of $60 billion, the NCDST uses a correspondence network of various North Carolina banks to allow deposits by all state agencies. In addition to accounting for deposits, the NCDST annually processes more than 23 million checks issued by the agencies, an average of 85,000 checks per business day, peaking at 210,000 on some days. The NCDST is similar to a community bank in terms of transactions numbers, and to a large bank in terms of assets.

FLEXCUBE will ensure that the NCDST meets its goals to improve operational and technological efficiencies, to provide additional customer care and convenience to state agencies by making maximum use of the Internet, to eliminate errors by comprehensive use of Straight Through Processing and to automate account reconciliation. In addition, FLEXCUBE will provide NCDST with greater control over online transactions and account balance tracking with FLEXCUBE's fully integrated General Ledger system.

About FLEXCUBE

FLEXCUBE is already meeting the IT systems needs of financial services firm's enterprise in retail banking, corporate banking or both simultaneously. While totally modular in design and function, FLEXCUBE can also be used as a one-stop solution that offers integrated delivery of all banking products across the entire firm and across the entire branch, telephone, ATM, POS and Internet networks as well. With over 120 FSI customers worldwide FLEXCUBE is truly an industrial strength solution and includes full multi-currency and multi-language capabilities. FLEXCUBE's state-of-the-art architecture can be tailored to the specific requirements of each client.

About i-flex

Formed in 1989, i-flex solutions is a world leader in integrated IT solutions expressly for the financial services industry. The company helps financial institutions mitigate risk, reduce transaction costs and rapidly respond to changing market conditions by supporting and speeding FSIs in the introduction of new products to the marketplace. The company's integrated software solutions, deep financial services domain expertise and range of consulting services allows i-flex to focus on both commercial and consumer banking (FLEXCUBE is rated as the number two corporate and the number two retail banking solution in the world), as well as securities and insurance. For more information, please visit http://www.iflexsolutions.com.

About the NCDST

The North Carolina Department of State Treasurer is headed by State Treasurer Richard Moore, who took office as North Carolina's 13th state treasurer in 2001. The Department serves as the State's banker and custodian of all public monies, and is responsible for administering the North Carolina Public Employees' Retirement Systems, which has 600,000 active and retired members. The Department also provides debt management and fiscal management services to state and local governments through its State and Local Government Finance Division.