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Press Release

Scivantage to Host Panel Discussion on Trends in Electronic Account Opening at SIA Operations Conference

Mar 31, 2006

NEW YORK – March 31, 2006 – Scivantage, the premier provider of web-based, front- and middle-office brokerage products and solutions, today announced that it will host a panel discussion on trends and issues in electronic account opening for online brokerage platforms at the Securities Industry Association’s Operations Conference on May 11, 2006 at 11:30am at the JW Marriott Desert Ridge Resort and Spa in Phoenix, Arizona. Demand for Electronic Account Opening functionality is ‘on fire’ and perfectly illustrates the challenges and successes facing leading broker/dealers. Scivantage has assembled an expert panel of analyst, client and development voices to investigate this cutting-edge topic and answer questions about this hot technology

Speakers on the panel will be Sang Lee, Managing Partner & Co-Founder, Aite Group, who will give the analyst view; Michael Weiss, President of Independent Financial Marketing Group, a SunLife Company, who will provide client perspectives; and Adnane Charchour, President & CEO of Scivantage, who will talk about development issues. A question and answer period will follow at the end of the discussion.

IMPORTANT POST-SHOW UPDATE: View the powerpoint presentation of the speakers discussion on the web at http://www.scivantage.com/pdf/ScivantageSIAaccountOpeningPanel.pdf

Traditionally, account opening has been heavily paper-driven, product or business silo-specific, and manually intensive. It can also be very personal and complicated, often having unique workflows for each account type and service. Given these challenges, finding a simple solution which can meet financial institutions’ needs has been a difficult proposition. Middle Office software, such as Scivantage’s eAccounts electronic account opening and administration module, is at long last fulfilling its promise to perform and manage any transaction, anywhere.

Sang Lee is a co-founder of Aite Group and currently serves as the Managing Partner. Mr. Lee's expertise lies in the securities and investments vertical and has advised many global financial institutions, software and hardware vendors, and professional services firms in sell-side and buy-side electronic trading technology, market structure, brokerage technology evolution, and wealth management. He has been quoted in and written extensively for the media, including The Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and Securities Industry News. Prior to joining Aite Group, he was a founding member of Celent Communications and served as the Manager of the Securities & Investments Group as well as the Operations Group. Aite Group is an independent research and advisory firm focused on business, technology and regulatory issues and their impact on the financial services industry. Aite brings together a team of experts to deliver comprehensive, timely, and actionable advice to financial institutions and technology vendors. It is headquartered in Boston.

Michael Weiss is the President of Independent Financial Marketing Group, or IFMG. Mr. Weiss leads the senior management team in achieving IFMG’s strategic initiatives particularly in the areas of client relations, operations and compliance excellence. Michael has more than 25 years of experience in the financial services industry, including serving as Chief Operations Officer at Oppenheimer and Company/CIBC World Markets. Most recently he held the position of President at Sebago Associates, a financial services business consultancy in New York. He also brings experience as Chief Operating Officer and Senior Executive Vice President with Golden Retirement Resources, a product development and proprietary technology solution company. IFMG provides banks and credit unions with access to a wide range of investment, advisory and insurance products. It offers new and innovative services including technology, sales support, training, marketing, and recruiting and it is ranked number one in the sales of annuities, mutual funds and securities through financial institutions.

Adnane Charchour, President and CEO of Scivantage, has a distinguished and proven track record in the financial industry, helping Scivantage to provide superior technology-based products and services in the broker-dealer space. Adnane joined Scivantage from Fleet Securities. As an officer and part of the technology executive team, he led Fleet’s e-technology strategy in the U.S. and abroad, running a large organization. He helped many national and international banks, brokerage firms and fund companies build online brokerage arms, including Fleet Bank, Quick & Reilly and Strong Capital Management.

Scivantage eAccounts is an advanced account opening and administration platform, targeted towards retail investors, brokers, sales assistants and operations personnel. eAccounts automates and simplifies the account opening process by employing a flexible user-interface and an integrated decision support and workflow system. eAccounts’ user interface ensures the proper information is captured and validated immediately based on the type of account – not only when opening new accounts but also during account maintenance -- ensuring account data integrity for back-office processing. eAccounts also provides a comprehensive audit trail which can be saved indefinitely.

The module instantly reviews applications and customer requests based upon user-defined business rules and workflows. When exceptions occur, eAccounts utilizes the business rules and workflows to reject or route the request to the appropriate department within the firm for further review. The business rules and workflows can be configured at any time through a convenient web interface on the fly. eAccounts also provides flexible new account numbering options, pre-fills and generates all required customer documents, and is Patriot Act compliant.

Recent improvements to eAccounts include allowing customers to open more than one account at a time. Users simply select which type of accounts they wish to open at the beginning of the account opening process and the site will aggregate all the necessary input screens into one workflow, eliminating the need for time-consuming, duplicate information entry.