COCC TECHNOLOGY ADVANCES USA PATRIOT ACT COMPLIANCE

AVON, CT - August 22, 2003 - Banks seeking compliance with the latest security and anti-money laundering regulations have a new ally in COCC's open, relational technology, according to Richard A. Leone, President and CEO at COCC, an information technology outsourcer to community financial institutions throughout the northeastern United States. USA PATRIOT Act requirements for list matching and customer identification can be more easily accomplished through features of COCC's core banking applications than older-style legacy systems.

The company's experience with open technology is the result of migrating all of its community bank clients to the platform in the past two years, the only company in the nation to have successfully done so. Beyond the core platform's vast Oracle database and open standards based architecture, its customer-centric structure makes it easy to identify questionable customers.

"The open architecture of COCC's INSIGHT core system has distinct advantages over legacy mainframe systems," said Joseph D. Lockwood, Chief Technology Officer at COCC. "Because INSIGHT is customer-centric, we can quickly scan the database for questionable customers rather than search individual accounts for those customers' names, which may not be spelled correctly. The result is quicker, more accurate identification and compliance."

Mr. Lockwood further explained that COCC's open systems enable it to easily modify the system's mandatory validation rules that enforce the USA PATRIOT Act's customer identification requirements. "Enhancements to our banking application extend these rules to the required CIP data and report any person or organization that failed to comply," said Lockwood. "If the customer has not supplied the required identification information, s/he cannot perform any transaction activity."

The company has also acquired new software to provide the latest automated list checking capabilities, including a web-based, online check against the most recent OFAC/FINCEN watch lists. The on-line list matching feature enables a bank's customer service representatives to check new customers at the platform. Without this feature, the bank typically waits for a "back room" list matching process, which takes significantly longer to perform. Again, this new software package is more easily activated as a result of COCC's open system architecture which allows specialized components to be added to the system using the latest XML interface technologies.

"COCC is raising its hand as the most responsive data center in the industry in meeting our government's heightened security concerns," said Leone. "We feel that our platform and these new features will provide the tools for bank management to implement their boards' policies in compliance with the latest security regulations."