Clarke American Expands Call Center Network.

Business Editors

SAN ANTONIO--(Business Wire)--May 1, 2002

Malcolm Baldrige Award Recipient Announces Additional

San Antonio Location

Clarke American Checks, Inc. announced plans to open its newest contact center in San Antonio this July. The contact center will supplement the existing San Antonio center and bring Clarke American's contact center network to seven facilities.

Clarke American, a provider of checks and innovative products and services, produces over 10 billion personal and business checks for more than 4,000 banks, credit unions, and other financial institutions nationwide.

The company plans to hire more than 200 new associates to staff this contact center by year-end. Currently more than 1,000 customer service professionals are employed in its six existing facilities. Clarke American has benchmarked call center facilities recognized for quality and performance excellence. When measured against these call centers, Clarke American's contact centers performed comparably or better than the world class benchmarks.

The new contact center will provide 24-hours-a-day, 7-days-a-week customer service and sales via the telephone, web, email and web chat for its partners and their customers. Clarke American's Vice President and General Manager of Customer Service Kaari Swope said, "Customers want to transact business in the most convenient way any time and any way they can. We believe in letting the customer conduct `business your way,' and we are giving them maximum flexibility and the convenience of using the access method they prefer. It is yet another way we are working with our financial institution partners to help attract and build strong customer relationships."

The new facility demonstrates Clarke American's continual commitment to invest in customer management solutions. Currently, the company handles more than 13 million contacts yearly from partners and customers. It also boasts the industry's highest customer satisfaction rate of over 96 percent.

"The Malcolm Baldrige Award is the highest honor a company can receive for quality," Swope added. "Clarke American prides itself on continuing to provide customer focused solutions that delight our partners and our customers. We work to ensure service quality in everything we do. Our customer service professionals go through at least 120 hours of training before talking to a customer. We focus on providing consistent and complete satisfaction."

About Clarke American Checks, Inc.

Clarke American Checks, Inc. is one of the largest security check printers to the financial institution industry in the United States. At unmatched rates of accuracy and rapid delivery, Clarke American produces more than 10 billion personal and business checks a year in a variety of formats for more than 4,000 banks, credit unions, and other financial services companies nationwide.

Financial institutions also rely on Clarke American to deliver direct marketing, customer services, e-Commerce solutions, treasury management documents, letterchecks, and other financial accessories. The company has more than 3,400 associates and a national network of electronically linked production facilities and customer service centers throughout the country.

Clarke American was honored by the U.S. Department of Commerce as a recipient of the 2001 Malcolm Baldrige National Award in the category of manufacturing. The top honor a U.S. company can receive for quality management and business excellence, the award promotes quality awareness and publicizes successful quality strategies. The Quality Texas Foundation also named the company as the sole recipient of the 2001 Texas Award for Performance Excellence. Fourteen state banking associations and a number of credit union associations across the nation endorse Clarke American as their official check printer. Clarke American is a subsidiary of Novar plc of Weybridge, Surrey, England. For more information about Clarke American, visit www.clarkeamerican.com.