BB&T Harnesses SAS(R) to Better Manage Credit Risk.

CARY, N.C. -- BB&T Corporation (NYSE: BBT) has selected SAS(R) Credit Risk Management to enhance its portfolio and predictive modeling capabilities. With SAS, the leader in business intelligence, BB&T Corporation, the nation's ninth largest financial holding company, is seeking to enhance risk-adjusted returns, make more efficient use of the bank's capital and continue to generate superior long-term economic rewards for its shareholders.

"SAS Credit Risk Management will augment BB&T's existing strengths in the credit risk arena," said Ken Chalk, chief credit officer at BB&T. "SAS solutions will help us continue to generate lower and less volatile loan losses than our peers. By incorporating SAS' cutting-edge technology, intellectual property and flexibility into our credit risk management infrastructure, we can tailor models to our specific credit computing environment and business circumstances."

BB&T has been a SAS customer since 1991 and views SAS as the industry benchmark for analytics. As BB&T has grown, so has the size and complexity of the bank's credit risk exposure. When BB&T execs began looking for a better way to measure and analyze risk, SAS was a natural choice. BB&T already uses SAS for anti-money laundering compliance and marketing analytics to identify, generate and deliver leads within the bank. Selecting SAS for credit risk analytics represents further expansion of this enterprise commitment to creating an integrated enterprisewide analytical environment.

"With SAS, we expect to further improve upon results we have already obtained from our current analytic resources," said Ken Daniels, corporate credit risk manager at BB&T. "By gaining a clearer understanding of the bank's risk at the transaction and portfolio level, we hope to realize a more efficient deployment of capital. Also, we expect substantial cost savings by taking predictive modeling in house, including custom credit scorecard development and validation."

SAS Credit Risk Management is a comprehensive solution capable of performing credit data management, credit scoring and credit portfolio risk management while providing a credit risk dashboard. Using the SAS solution, organizations can measure credit risk exposures accurately and then evaluate alternative strategies for managing risk.

About BB&T

Based in Winston-Salem, N.C., BB&T Corporation (NYSE: BBT) and its subsidiaries offer full-service commercial and retail banking and additional financial services such as risk management, employee benefits, international services, treasury management, capital markets and corporate trust. BB&T operates more than 1,400 financial centers in the Carolinas, Virginia, Maryland, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Indiana and Washington, D.C. With $109.2 billion in assets, BB&T Corp. is the nation's ninth largest financial holding company. More information about BB&T Corp. is available at www.bbandt.com.

About SAS

SAS is the market leader in providing a new generation of business intelligence software and services that create true enterprise intelligence. SAS solutions are used at 40,000 sites - including 96 of the top 100 companies on the FORTUNE Global 500(R) - to develop more profitable relationships with customers and suppliers; to enable better, more accurate and informed decisions; and to drive organizations forward. SAS is the only vendor that completely integrates leading data warehousing, analytics and traditional BI applications to create intelligence from massive amounts of data. For three decades, SAS has been giving customers around the world The Power to Know(R). Visit us at www.sas.com.

SAS and all other SAS Institute Inc. product or service names are registered trademarks or trademarks of SAS Institute Inc. in the USA and other countries. (R) indicates USA registration. Other brand and product names are trademarks of their respective companies.