American Financial Group Chooses AscendantOne Rating and Policy-Management System.

Business Editors

NASHUA, N.H.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 18, 2003

AscendantOne(R), Inc., a unit of ISO, has signed a contract with American Financial Group, Inc. (AFG) to integrate AscendantOne's property/casualty solutions into AFG's Services Oriented Architecture (SOA). AFG's Information Technology Services (ITServices) Division creates business technology solutions for Great American Insurance Group, through which AFG is engaged in the insurance business.

Under the terms of the agreement, AscendantOne's browser-based rate-quote and policy-administration systems will be integrated with other SOA technology components to support Great American Insurance Group's insurance and information processing requirements. As an internal services provider, AFG ITServices Division will make AscendantOne's component-based architecture -- including its rating and policy systems -- available to Great American Insurance Group.

AFG ITServices chose AscendantOne's flexible, web services-driven solution suite to consolidate and accelerate its delivery of property/casualty sales and service functionality to Great American Insurance Group's business units. The integration of AscendantOne into AFG's component architecture is part of a drive to enhance and web-enable key technology infrastructures across AFG's diverse business units.

Carl Jaekel, Enterprise Architect, AFG ITServices said: "As we develop advanced, on-demand technology services in response to emerging business needs, it is imperative that we provide flexible and secure business-enhancing functionality to Great American Insurance Group's business units. AscendantOne's browser-based solutions mirror and complement our Services Oriented Architecture, enabling us to rapidly expand delivery of robust, scalable commercial automation on behalf of our business units at desired points of sales and service."

AFG ITServices and AscendantOne have already begun the first phase of project initiatives, which include validation of bidirectional XML interfaces via message-queuing technology to:

-- address policy-inquiry requests;

-- process coverage-verification requests from Great American

Insurance Group's claims module;

-- feed Great American's billing component with AscendantOne

policy data for producing invoices; and

-- integrate AscendantOne transaction data with components of

Great American system architecture, including policy details

from both Great American's unique product offerings and

AscendantOne's ISO product inventory.

"AscendantOne is pleased to have been selected by AFG's ITServices Division as a complementary solution provider. The flexibility of our XML-driven, network-based solutions will help ITServices design seamless, real-time workflows for business constituents to write and service specialty programs in any distribution framework," said Chuck Boodro, President of AscendantOne.

For more information: www.amfnl.com, www.AscendantOne.com.