Cognos and IBM Performance solution helps banks integrate risk management and profitability planning across core systems


– Risk Adjusted Profitability Blueprint reduces risk, enables greater financial planning accuracy, and builds stronger alignment between finance and risk organisations –


London, UK – August 22, 2007 – Cognos (NASDAQ: COGN; TSX: CSN), a leader in business intelligence and performance management solutions, and IBM (NYSE: IBM) has launched a new financial services solution. It is designed to help banks more effectively integrate critical risk information with revenue and expense planning data to maximise risk-adjusted return on capital.

The Cognos-IBM Risk Adjusted Profitability Blueprint provides a performance management framework that helps bank executives build precise multi-dimensional, product-level profitability plans and forecasts that are aligned with risk management strategies, . This enables greater financial planning accuracy and building a critical connection between the finance and risk organisations.

“Banks today are challenged with striking a delicate balance between aggressively growing their business while controlling and minimising their risk exposure,” said Kathleen Wilhide, research director, GRC and Financial Performance Management Solutions, at IDC. “Risk adjusted financial reporting provides another dimension to traditional financial metrics, and requires the integration of domain expertise and software capabilities to develop an automated solution. The co-developed blueprint embeds this expertise and delivers the opportunity for a quick-time-to-value implementation that should jumpstart risk adjusted profitability reporting integrated with much needed planning and forecasting capabilities.”

"Banks require core banking systems that are integrated, open, flexible, scalable and secure,” said June Yee Felix, general manager, banking solutions and strategy, IBM. “The integration of IBM’s Banking Data Warehouse with Cognos 8 Planning and BI will help customers achieve a comprehensive, integrated view of their core banking business in order to drive increased profits and shareholder value. Together with Cognos, we have delivered a solution that can break down the traditional silos between risk and finance reporting to drive more value from existing information assets."

"IBM and Cognos share a common vision for providing cost-effective solutions that enable banks to identify, report on and analyse the costs of trade, performance, risk management, compliance and profitability, among others,” said Laurence Trigwell, senior financial services director, Cognos. “Through this joint offering, banks will finally be able to synchronise profitability plans with relevant risk scenarios, minimising discrepancies between projected and actual financial results. This new Blueprint offers a significant head-start in helping banks boost profitability with a complete understanding of the credit and operational risks at play."

NOTE TO EDITORS - Cognos and IBM will be showcasing the new Cognos-IBM Risk Adjusted Profitability Blueprint at the Gartner Financial Services Technology Summit, Booth K, Westside Ballroom, Marriott Marquis Hotel, New York City, August 27-29, 2007.

About Cogos Performance Blueprints
Cognos offers a full suite of Performance Blueprints to address planning and performance management process areas that directly impact an organisation’s ability to create business value. Both functional and industry-specific process areas can now be automated, streamlined and transformed to help organisations quickly create more business value. Developed by the Cognos Innovation Center for Performance Management, the Cognos Performance Blueprints are a key component within the Cognos Performance Management System, which combines technology, best practices, analytical applications and solutions, and a broad network of partners into a single performance management solution. For further information on the Cognos Performance Blueprints see http://www.cognos.com/innovationcenter/blueprint.html.

About IBM
For more information about IBM, visit www.ibm.com.

About Cognos, an IBM Company
Cognos, an IBM company, is the world leader in business intelligence and performance management solutions.

It provides world-class enterprise planning and BI software and services to help companies plan, understand and manage financial and operational performance.
Cognos was acquired by IBM in January 2008.

For more information, visit http://www.ibm.com/software/data/ and http://www.cognos.com/uk/

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