Nationwide Announces Major Business Transformation Program to Revolutionize their Operations

Nationwide Selects SAP® for Banking Solutions to Support Growth and Provide Increased Benefits to Customers

SWINDON, ENGLAND.- SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) today announced that Nationwide, the world’s largest building society, has selected the SAP® for Banking solution portfolio as its new technology platform. Nationwide will implement the new software as part of a business transformation program to provide increased benefits to its customers. By doing so, Nationwide will become the first financial services provider in the UK to adopt the newest version of SAP for Banking, which it will use to service its growing banking, savings and mortgage business. As part of the program, named Voyager, Nationwide will modernize its technology with an integrated, next-generation technology platform, streamlining its core processes while supporting business growth and reducing costs.

Nationwide will lead a group of world-class business partners who each bring specialist skills and experience to integrate SAP for Banking into Nationwide by 2012. The first phase of the program will focus on current accounts, with subsequent phases supporting savings, mortgages and branch systems. Nationwide is seeking to gain major advantages from its work with SAP, including improved operational efficiency, streamlining of its administrative processes, reduced operating costs and increased product agility. For SAP, this is a significant milestone and proof point of the company’s overall presence in the banking industry. In particular, it serves as validation of the company’s flexible and scalable platform to support business growth while maintaining operations during the IT transformation program.

SAP is the world’s leading provider of business software and has a proven track record in managing large-scale technology integrations around the globe. Through SAP for Banking customers will benefit from:

* New and innovative products
* Greater product choice and flexibility
* Improved turnaround and processing of applications and transactions.

“The financial services sector is rapidly evolving and in order for Nationwide to continue to stand out from competitors and meet tomorrow’s business challenges we must ensure we have the right technology in place to support our growth strategies,” said Darin Brumby, Nationwide director responsible for overseeing the system’s implementation and project delivery at Nationwide. “We are delighted to have formed this new relationship with SAP to support our business growth and customer service improvement plans. We want to be at the forefront of this new innovation and exploit the benefits for our customers. Our goal is to ensure that Nationwide can deliver the very best products and services to our members.

“SAP for Banking will give us the flexibility to adapt and respond to unseen future changes and advancements in the industry,” added Mr Brumby. “Not only will it enhance our speed to market with products, it will also improve the overall customer experience while reducing costs. This is an exciting time for Nationwide which will see our technology systems move into the twenty-first century and strengthen our presence in the marketplace.”

“We are proud to be a part of Nationwide’s business transformation and look forward to a long-term relationship, supporting their strategic business transformation agenda,” said Thomas Balgheim, senior vice president, global banking line of business, SAP AG. “We are very pleased Nationwide’s technology operations and business processes will be based on the SAP platform, which will enable their growth today and into the future. SAP’s banking specific solutions are built upon a flexible and scalable platform that provide the foundation for addressing the many challenges faced by financial services providers, from increased competition and value adding customer services, to the demands of regulatory compliance and managing new growth opportunities.”

SAP® for Banking
The SAP® for Banking solution portfolio provides banking-specific (transactional banking, CRM, risk management) and banking-relevant (financial accounting, human resources management, procurement) services and solutions created on a single enterprise SOA-enabled business process platform (BPP). With more than 600 customers in 60 countries worldwide, SAP for Banking provides an integrated set of tools and automated processes to manage every aspect of the front- and back-office banking environment—from high-volume transactional banking processes and customer relationship management to financial accounting, cost controlling and profitability and risk analysis. Based on the open architecture of the SAP NetWeaver® technology platform, SAP for Banking helps companies expertly manage transactions and relationships across the institution to quickly identify and exploit market opportunities and easily tailor new products to the specific needs of individual customers.