Cognos Partners with Suncorp to Develop Performance Solution to Help Insurance Companies Optimize Product Profitability.

New Cognos Insurance Product Performance Blueprint enables insurers to analyse profitability and adapt quickly to meet changing market conditions

BURLINGTON, Mass. -- Cognos (Nasdaq: COGN; TSX: CSN), the world leader in business intelligence and performance management solutions, today launched a new performance management solution designed to help insurance companies optimize forecasting and reporting of business segment and insurance product profitability.

Co-developed with Suncorp, one of Australia's largest general insurance groups, the Cognos Insurance Product Performance Blueprint enables insurers to create income statements and balance sheets at the business segment level, by product line, product and brand, enabling business analysts, product managers and finance executives to report and analyse profitability, and effectively plan initiatives to improve business segment results.

"Insurers' revenue growth and profitability depend on offering good products that are priced according to exposure and distributed efficiently. Insurers should invest in new solutions and modify their processes to optimize revenue and gross written premiums," said Kimberly Harris-Ferrante, research vice president at Gartner.

Anchored on Cognos 8 Planning and Cognos 8 BI and based on insurance industry best practices, the Cognos Insurance Product Performance Blueprint offers insurers a significant head-start in business segment and product profitability planning and reporting. Specifically, insurers can benefit from:

* Full business segment-level rolling income statements and balance sheets based on multiple scenarios (from 'business-as-usual' to the impact of a strategic investment) to determine the best course of action and enable rapid adjustments as market conditions change.

* Forecasts that encompass insurance premium revenues, such as new policies and renewals, expenses (for example, commissions) and claims, providing business analysts with the data they need to improve decision-making and business results.

* Managed and ad hoc reports and intuitive dashboards that provide comprehensive insight at every level of the business segment and product line hierarchy.

Suncorp Collaboration

The Blueprint also capitalizes on Suncorp's general insurance forecasting methodologies and expertise. Suncorp recently standardized on Cognos as its performance management platform, and benefited from the best practices contained within several of Cognos' financial performance Blueprints - including Expense Planning and Control, Workforce Planning, and Capital Project Planning - to accelerate corporate-wide rollout of enterprise planning capabilities. Fueled by this success, Suncorp worked with Cognos in developing an insurance-specific Blueprint, contributing subject matter expertise including techniques on how to simplify revenue phasing and claims projections.

"The Cognos Insurance Product Performance Blueprint offers a strong performance management platform that enables insurers to optimise its product mix and continuously drive profitability through both historical reporting and analysis and long-term initiative planning and forecasting," said John Herrmann, manager of group budgeting and forecasting at Suncorp. "We are pleased that other insurers globally will be able to benefit from the combined value-add that both Suncorp and Cognos have to offer."

Available immediately to customers, the Cognos Insurance Product Performance Blueprint is the third financial services industry-specific solution launched by Cognos in the past year, joining the Cognos Branch Performance Blueprint and the Cognos Customer Segment Performance Blueprint, which is offered in two versions - one for Corporate Banking, and the other designed specifically for Retail Banks.

"In the insurance industry, it is critical to drive product performance for both individual products and the product portfolio as a whole. However, that demands high levels of participation and coordination between product and brand managers close to the target segments, together with finance, actuaries and senior management," said Laurence Trigwell, senior director of financial services at Cognos. "The Cognos Insurance Product Performance Blueprint offers an industry-validated, best practices vision of what forecast and profitability models should look like, providing insurers a valuable place to start their Cognos performance management journey."

Cognos is a recognized leader in delivering performance management solutions for the insurance industry. Over 1,000 financial services institutions worldwide use Cognos, including 4 of the top 5 global insurance companies. Insurance customers include AAA Life, AIG, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC) - Insurance division, Chubb Insurance Company of Europe, and Prudential UK. For more information about Cognos solutions for the insurance industry, please visit http://www.cognos.com/solutions/industry/banking-financial-services/ insurance.html. (Due to the length of this URL, it may be necessary to copy and paste it into your Internet browser's URL address field. You may also need to remove an extra space in the URL if one exists.)

ABOUT COGNOS PERFORMANCE BLUEPRINTS:

Cognos offers a full suite of Performance Blueprints to address planning and performance management process areas that directly impact an organisation's ability to create business value. Both functional and industry-specific process areas can now be automated, streamlined and transformed to help organisations quickly create more business value. Developed by the Cognos Innovation Center for Performance Management, the Cognos Performance Blueprints are a key component within the Cognos Performance Management System, which combines technology, best practices, analytical applications and solutions, and a broad network of partners into a single performance management solution. For further information on the Cognos Performance Blueprints see http://www.cognos.com/innovationcenter/blueprint.html.

ABOUT SUNCORP:

Suncorp is one of Australia and New Zealand's leading diversified financial services companies, offering banking, insurance, and wealth management products to around 8 million customers. For more information, visit http://www.suncorp.com.au

ABOUT COGNOS:

Cognos, the world leader in business intelligence and performance management solutions, provides world-class enterprise planning and BI software and services to help companies plan, understand and manage financial and operational performance.

Cognos brings together technology, analytical applications, best practices, and a broad network of partners to give customers a complete performance system. The Cognos performance system is an open and adaptive solution that leverages an organisation's ERP, packaged applications, and database investments. It gives customers the ability to answer the questions -- How are we doing? Why are we on or off track? What should we do about it? - and enables them to understand and monitor current performance while planning future business strategies.

Cognos serves more than 23,000 customers in more than 135 countries, and its top 100 enterprise customers consistently outperform market indexes. Cognos performance management solutions and services are also available from more than 3,000 worldwide partners and resellers. For more information, visit the Cognos Web site at http://www.cognos.com

Cognos and the Cognos logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Cognos Incorporated in the United States and/or other countries. All other names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies. Note to Editors: Copies of previous Cognos press releases and Corporate and product information are available on the Cognos Web site at www.cognos.com.