Countrywide Home Loans Selects Nuance to Provide Voice Automation Solution.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

MENLO PARK, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 11, 2004

Nuance (Nasdaq:NUAN), the voice automation expert, today announced that one of the country's leading mortgage lenders, Countrywide Home Loans, Inc., a subsidiary of Countrywide Financial Corporation (NYSE:CFC), has chosen a range of Nuance voice automation products to power its strategic customer service solutions.

"Countrywide's ability to maintain its competitive advantage can be directly linked to its successful deployment of advanced IT solutions," said Richard Jones, CIO, Countrywide. "For our customer-facing mortgage application, we evaluated a number of speech vendors and Nuance was best able to deliver on our needs -- a complete, open VoiceXML-based voice automation solution. Nuance's solution translates to lower deployment costs for Countrywide and faster access to specific information for customers. For us, Nuance speech was the perfect complement to our ongoing company-wide information technology initiative -- with our customers reaping the rewards."

Countrywide selected Nuance Voice Platform(TM), the industry's first VoiceXML-based software platform specifically designed for speech systems, as well as Nuance's award-winning speech recognition software and Nuance Vocalizer(TM) text-to-speech (TTS) engine. These products will enhance the company's nationwide, customer-friendly telephone hotlines. Additionally, because Nuance Voice Platform is integrated with Open Access(TM) technology from NMS Communications (Nasdaq:NMSS), Countrywide will easily be able to make enhancements in the future that further improve the mortgage application experience for its customers.

"Voice automation helps companies realize a competitive advantage and achieve bottom-line business results," said Chuck Berger, president and CEO of Nuance. "Countrywide is at the forefront of the growing number of companies that see the value in voice automation solutions and VoiceXML, which speed customer access to information and extend existing IT investments. Nuance is pleased to be a part of Countrywide's company-wide IT quality initiative."

Nuance Voice Platform

Nuance Voice Platform is the industry's first VoiceXML standards-based software platform optimized for speech solutions. Designed to deliver maximum business benefits, including cost savings, increased customer satisfaction and new revenue from voice-driven services, Nuance Voice Platform offers a broad range of speech specific capabilities, including the industry's first real-time Return on Investment (ROI) measurement and reporting tool. With the ROI Tracker(TM), Nuance Voice Platform monitors speech system performance in real-time, providing business managers with an accurate view of the effectiveness of their customer care initiatives and the data needed to make strategic business decisions.

About Countrywide Home Loans, Inc.

Founded in 1969, Countrywide Financial Corporation (NYSE:CFC) is a member of the S&P 500, Fortune 500 and Forbes 500. Countrywide, through its subsidiaries, provides mortgage banking and diversified financial services in domestic and international markets. Mortgage banking businesses include loan production and servicing, principally through Countrywide Home Loans, Inc., which originates, purchases, securitizes, sells, and services primarily prime-quality loans. The company is headquartered in Calabasas, California, and has more than 30,000 employees and over 500 offices. For more information about the company, visit Countrywide's Web site at www.countrywide.com.

About Nuance

Nuance is the voice automation expert. Nuance's speech software solutions enable automated access to everything from account balances to flight information, email reading to voice activated dialing -- accessed using nothing more than the power of voice and an ordinary phone. In markets around the world, leading enterprises and telecommunications carriers -- including British Airways, Nomura Securities, OnStar, Sprint PCS, United Parcel Service, Vodafone, and many more -- work with Nuance to reduce costs, increase customer satisfaction and retention, create new sources of revenue and improve security. Nuance is headquartered in Menlo Park, Calif. and has offices around the world. For more information, visit http://www.nuance.com or call 1-888-NUANCE-8.

This press release contains forward-looking statements, including, for example, those relating to the business and customer benefits attainable by using Nuance's speech products and the anticipated use and customer adoption of deployed speech solutions. There is no assurance that the results contemplated by any forward-looking statements will be realized. The following factors, risks and uncertainties, among others, could cause actual results to differ materially from those described or implied in this press release's forward-looking statements: the risk that any of these products or solutions will not achieve anticipated or projected performance levels, deployment times, cost savings, customer adoption, automation rates and/or other benefits in some or all circumstances; the risk that certain deployments may not continue or expand as anticipated in some or all circumstances; and other factors described in Nuance's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including but not limited to Nuance's last-filed Form 10-Q. Nuance does not undertake to update any oral or written forward-looking statements that may be made by or on behalf of Nuance.

Nuance, Nuance Vocalizer and Nuance Voice Platform are trademarks of Nuance Communications, Inc. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.