BCE Emergis Signs Agreement With Stewart Title Guaranty Company, One of the World's Largest Title Insurers.

MONTREAL--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 5, 1999--

BCE Emergis (TSE:IFM) (ME:IFM) today announced a five-year exclusive contract with Texas-based Stewart Title Guaranty Company to electronically process title insurance policies and certificates of insurance on behalf of Stewart. The project is currently being launched in the Province of Quebec, with a view to expanding this mandate to the rest of Canada in the very near future.

A relatively new real estate product in Canada, title insurance protects lending institutions and property buyers and owners against errors in titles and title registries, as well as fraud. In the United States, no real estate transaction is completed without title insurance. This title protection also allows U.S. mortgage lenders to "securitize" their mortgages - package them for sale as marketable securities to other institutions. While Stewart has been licensed to offer title insurance in Canada since 1987, this type of insurance has only recently begun to take off, as Canadian banks start to require it for certain types of mortgage transactions and, like their American counterparts, look at securitizing their mortgage loans.

Stewart and BCE Emergis are introducing title insurance on a large scale to the Quebec market. Stewart is currently in negotiation with Canadian financial institutions and is actively promoting its product to the Canadian legal community. BCE Emergis looks forward to electronically delivering Stewart's policy certificates to all new entities in Canada with whom Stewart signs an agreement.

"Our Canadian business has been growing exponentially," said Steve Lessack, Vice-President and Director of Canadian Operations at Stewart. "We have turned our back-office processing over to industry leader BCE Emergis. Without BCE Emergis' automated e-commerce system, Stewart would have difficulty handling the huge monthly increases in title underwriting across Canada. We expect the title insurance business to grow to hundreds of millions of dollars in Canada before long."

"With this partnership with Stewart, BCE Emergis is further increasing its presence in the mortgage sector," said Christian Trudeau, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, BCE Emergis. "Over the last three years, BCE Emergis has been active in this industry, successfully pursuing a strategy of partnering with industry leaders and major clients throughout North America to provide e-commerce solutions including electronic appraisal deliveries, relocation services, titles insurance policies processing and more. We firmly believe that electronic commerce is the future of the mortgage services industry."

Stewart Title Guaranty Company of Houston, Texas, is one of the world's largest title insurers. In 1998, Stewart underwrote over $245 billion of title insurance in the U.S., Canada and other countries around the globe. More information is available at www.stewart.com.

BCE Emergis delivers network-centric e-commerce business solutions that enable organizations to better compete in the global marketplace. Combining e-commerce services, network infrastructure, security services, and payments solutions through industry vertical applications, BCE Emergis offers a full suite of core technologies that are the essential building blocks for electronic commerce. BCE Emergis, one of the top tier electronic commerce providers in the world is now part of the TSE 300 Composite Index. More information is available at www.emergis.com.

This news release contains certain forward-looking statements that reflect the current views and/or expectations of BCE Emergis with respect to its performance, business and future events. Such statements are subject to a number of risks, uncertainties and assumptions. Actual results and events may vary significantly.