BURLINGTON, MA, September 22, 2003—With profitability concerns and capital regulations like Basel II pushing financial services companies to more closely monitor credit, market and operational risk, banks, finance companies, and insurance companies are turning to Cognos to reduce risk and assist in regulatory compliance. Cognos (NASDAQ: COGN; TSX: CSN) is the world leader in business intelligence (BI) and corporate performance management.

With hundreds of financial services customers worldwide, including 8 of the top 10 banks in the United States and all of the top 10 banks in Europe, Cognos understands the challenges faced by global organizations and enables them to manage and reduce risk by:

• Analyzing risk
• Reporting on risk
• Modeling the effect of risk on profitability
• Notifying stakeholders of risk events

More specifically, financial services companies use Cognos to produce global, consolidated reports on risk positions; analyze and report on credit risk to satisfy upcoming Basel II requirements; analyze entire loan portfolios; and model the effect on profitability resulting from varying levels of loan volumes and delinquency rates.

Cognos provides the necessary framework that enables the world's largest and most complex financial institutions to manage performance across the enterprise. By eliminating silos in credit risk reporting and providing risk analysts with the robust analytical capabilities to spot trends and quickly react to changing market conditions, customers have more efficient use of capital, which in turn, boosts profitability and benefits shareholders.

Some of the leading financial institutions implementing Cognos for risk management include:

• AmeriCredit
• CitiBank
• CIBC
• EquiFirst Corporation
• KeyCorp
• Banco Popular de Puerto Rico
• West LB
• Rabobank
• UBS

"Using Cognos enables us to add much needed context around our data. We are able to quickly answer key business questions to determine our level of risk in a particular country or partner dimension and quickly make decisions to protect ourselves," said Patrick Hendrikx, financial services, head front-end and reporting, UBS AG. "Whether you are looking for a high-level portfolio ceiling view or a more detailed transaction-level analysis, Cognos provides us with a powerful solution that lets us quickly and easily access and understand information on risk exposure."

"With Cognos, we've gone from a situation where we've had annual reviews and a quarterly interim review of the exposures, to where we can actively monitor exposures daily to get within limits," said Edmund Ruppmann, director of credit risk reporting, CitiGroup.

"The ability to monitor and quickly respond to risk is a important issue and with regulatory bodies implementing increasingly stricter controls the pressure is on for banks across the globe. Cognos offers banks a framework to plan, monitor, and report on business performance across the enterprise and the ability to access crucial information - like risk positions- in an instant," said Leo Tucker, director of banking solutions, Cognos. "Cognos enables our customers to analyze individual risk factors in near real-time, so you never miss an opportunity and you are always protected."

Cognos presents the Cognos Executive Risk Management Forum in New York City on Wednesday September 24th. Hear from industry experts, including Deloitte Consulting, Aberdeen, ISA Consulting and BAI, and find out about the latest tools and techniques, and best practices for controlling risk across your organization. For more information or to register, please visit http://www.cognos.com/rmforum/.