FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Alogent’s New Products Enable Financial Institutions to Truncate Checks Using Straight Through Check Processing

-Solution set offers co-existence with legacy systems while providing capability to process paper, data, and image in any proportion-

ATLANTA – April 30, 2003 – Alogent, a provider of payment transaction processing solutions for global financial institutions, remittance and payment processors, announced several new products to allow banks to co-exist with legacy item processing systems, while positioning themselves for greater efficiencies necessitated by slowing check volumes and Check 21 (formerly known as the Check Truncation Act).

“Financial institutions need to re-engineer their check processing operations as we deal with reduced volumes and check truncation,” said Robert Hunt, senior analyst at Tower Group. “The revitalization of the business process, however, has to be aligned with systems that are highly scalable for meeting peak demands and are flexible in design to meet changing business and regulatory requirements.”

The new products are Sierra Xchange® and additions to the Sierra Clearing product suite. The Sierra Clearing suite now includes applications for IBM CPCS: Sierra Clearing Prime, Sierra Clearing Reject Repair and Sierra Clearing Balancing. Both Sierra Xchange® and the Sierra Clearing suite are based on the proven Sierra Clearing platform that is in use by Global 50 banks today. Together with the widely implemented Sierra Xpedite™ product, these products make up the Sierra Solution.

According to recent studies, the number of checks written annually in the U.S is 42.5 billion. (Source: “The Use of Chekcs and Other Non-Cash Payment Instruments in the US” Federal Reserve Bulletin, Aug. 2002) Until this study, most capacity planning was based on a previous estimate of 65 billion checks. Flat or declining volumes processed through the existing infrastructure are causing unit costs of processing to climb. Check 21 - legislation that is making its way through Congress - facilitates check truncation and the use of check images in check processing. Thus the operating environment will see a changing mix of paper, data, and image, leading eventually to the total truncation of paper at the earliest point of payment.

“Banks and financial institutions face three imperatives as they approach Check 21,” said Vijay Balakrishnan, vice president of Marketing, at Alogent. “They need to reduce cost, while improving quality and service, be able to process paper, data, and image in any proportion, and maintain co-existence with existing legacy systems to minimize disruption. The Sierra Solution, straight through check processing™, is designed to meet these objectives.”

Sierra Xpedite - extensible deposit automation - captures, validates, processes and transmits check images and related information from points of payment both within, and outside a bank. These points can be branch tellers, branch back offices, image enabled ATMs, cash vaults, and merchant or corporate locations. Sierra Xpedite reduces work, eliminates teller and customer-introduced errors, and enables elimination and truncation of paper. It enables the transmission of automatically proofed and balanced, “ready to post” transactions to host and other systems.

Sierra Xchange®, unified payments gateway, collects, examines, corrects, reconciles, and distributes paper, data, and image in any proportion from both intra-bank, and inter-bank points of origination. For intra-bank processing, Sierra Xchange® collects data, and images from across a branch, ATM, or merchant network (from Sierra Xpedite or other systems).

Additionally, it can be configured to provide image-based workflows to perform validation, translation, corrections and transaction balancing. Today’s pre-Check 21 environment requires “paper to follow.” Through a patent-pending, iterative matching, and reconciliation workflow, Sierra Xchange® matches paper with electronically processed data and images from distributed points of payment, facilitating paper encoding in just one pass on a reader sorter.

Using intelligent endpoint routing, Sierra Xchange® can send transaction information and images to various destinations through software connectors. Thus transactions can be sent to established legacy systems like IBM CPCS, image archives (both internal and external), image replacement document (IRD) creation, service providers, and other banks, based on rules that maximize bank revenue and lower cost. Sierra Xchange® can also convert checks to ACH transactions for both forward presentment as well as returns processing. For inter-bank processing, Sierra Xchange® facilitates image and data exchange between banks.

As the volume of “paper to follow” diminishes, and the mix moves towards a greater proportion of image and data, Sierra Xchange’s adaptive workflows adjust to the mix, offering banks an evolutionary platform for straight through check processing.

Today’s environment also requires systems that can streamline the efficiency of centralized check processing centers, while offering co-existence with current systems. The Sierra Clearing suite is designed around image based efficiency, and coexistence.

All three newly announced Sierra Clearing applications have the appropriate entry and exit points to payments systems like IBM CPCS. They also share the common Sierra foundation that makes implementation of additional applications easy. This is particularly important as financial institutions can leverage the base Sierra Clearing platform for multiple uses thereby multiplying their processing efficiencies overall.  

Sierra Clearing applications provide the capability to process all work-types (branch, in-clearing, pre-encoded), and drive all paper transports off the same platform. Customers have the benefit of versatile implementation deploying any of the applications and migrating to the others in any order.

Sierra Clearing Prime offers the best in class prime image capture application centered on maintaining data and image integrity from the instant of capture. It captures prime pass image and data for any workflow on any sorter into CPCS and SuperMICR.

Sierra Clearing Reject Repair is a high-speed reject repair solution that uses images to streamline repair workflow efficiency. It offers a single-pass version, which eliminates an entire sorter pass as compared to other existing alternatives. Sierra Clearing Reject Repair uses CAR, LAR, and ICR for improved quality and optimized efficiency of sorters and operations staff.

Sierra Clearing Balancing is an image based balancing application that greatly improves operator workflow efficiency. It uses image recognition, smart balancing assist and configurable filters to significantly improve productivity. Integrated image and data information are presented to the operator through configurable workflows on an easy-to-use GUI to provide the necessary balancing tools at a single workstation.

Legacy system interfaces assure accurate delivery of corrected information.

It is also possible to implement all applications of Sierra Clearing from prime image capture through balancing for the cascaded benefits of all three applications.

About ProfitStars

ProfitStars, a division of Jack Henry & Associates, Inc., provides best-of-breed solutions that improve the performance of financial institutions of all asset sizes and charters, and diverse corporate entities. These solutions facilitate revenue and growth, risk mitigation and control, and cost control; and complement virtually any core information processing platform. Additional information is available at www.profitstars.com.

About Jack Henry & Associates, Inc.

Jack Henry & Associates, Inc. (NASDAQ: JKHY) is a leading provider of computer systems and ATM/debit card/ACH transaction processing services primarily for financial services organizations. Its technology solutions serve more than 11,800 customers nationwide, and are marketed and supported through three primary brands. Jack Henry Banking(TM) supports banks ranging from de novo to mid-tier institutions with information and transaction processing solutions. Symitar(TM) is the leading provider of information and transaction processing solutions for credit unions of all sizes. ProfitStars(R) provides highly specialized products and services that enable financial institutions of every asset size and charter, and diverse corporate entities to mitigate and control risks, optimize revenue and growth opportunities, and contain costs. Additional information is available at www.jackhenry.com.

Statements made in this news release that are not historical facts are forward-looking information. Actual results may differ materially from those projected in any forward-looking information. Specifically, there are a number of important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated by any forward-looking information. Additional information on these and other factors, which could affect the Company's financial results, are included in its Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings on Form 10-K, and potential investors should review these statements. Finally, there may be other factors not mentioned above or included in the Company's SEC filings that may cause actual results to differ materially from any forward-looking information.

SOURCE Jack Henry & Associates, Inc.

http://www.jackhenry.com