Hong Leong Finance Selects Fujitsu Asia to Develop Branch Teller Solution

Singapore, July 21, 2003

Fujitsu Asia Pte Ltd announced today its technology partnership agreement with Hong Leong Finance (HLF) to develop and enhance a Branch Teller Solution (BTS). This is part of HLF's goal to strengthen its leadership and competitiveness with innovative technology.

As part of HLF's corporate strategy to reach customers in a more efficient way, the IT project will provide the platform to support additional front end capabilities and deliver top quality products and services to its customers. This project is estimated to cost S$3 million.

Fujitsu Asia will provide HLF with complete branch functionality coverage including the development of a new platform to replace the existing one, user interface and dialogue management, communication between branch teller applications and a host core banking system.

Fujitsu Asia will also develop applications for financial and infrastructure transactions, financial printing and magnetic stripe read or write functions for HLF's BTS.

"We realise the needs of our customers are constantly changing and the new Fujitsu Asia Bank Teller System will enhance our competitive position and take Hong Leong Finance to a new era of superior customer service. Hong Leong Finance has been tailoring financing schemes for SMEs for more than 40 years and we see this as a natural extension of our service," said Mr Ian Macdonald, President of Hong Leong Finance.

"Fujitsu Asia, one of the leading regional IT and Telecommunications solution provider, is pleased to develop the new BTS for Hong Leong Finance. We believe this scheme will bring about a change in IT ideologies at Hong Leong Finance. This IT initiative will present a more resourceful and flexible system that will provide an end-to-end customer solution for success," said Mr Choi Chee Kong, Vice President, Solutions Technology Group, Fujitsu Asia.

The solution aims to deliver a seamless customer experience through a web enabled application environment and will focus on end-to-end processing. This will include replacing the existing TFM C programming language-based platform and PROFiT branch teller application with a new software framework. New paradigms that can scale according to HLF's business needs will also be developed. This solution will have a new web look application presentation layer for all branches and departments.