National Cooperative Bank Launches NCB.Coop; NCB Annual Meeting Celebrates New Internet Identity for Cooperative Businesses Around the World.

Business Editors

WASHINGTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 25, 2002

Taking advantage of the new Dot-Coop domain, National Cooperative Bank (NCB) launched www.ncb.coop at its annual meeting today.

The Dot-Coop domain premiered earlier this year and is limited to cooperatives and cooperative service organizations worldwide.

Dot-Coop is intended both to provide cooperatives with a distinctive identity on the Internet and to allow them to reserve names which best describe their businesses but may have already been reserved under .com, .net or .org domain extensions. NCB, a leading U.S. financial service provider for cooperatives and a cooperative business itself, is founding member of the Dot-Coop initiative.

The announcement came at NCB's Annual Meeting held at La Maison Francaise, the cultural center for the French Embassy in Washington, DC. As part of the meeting's theme, "Cooperation: The Fabric of Our Communities," NCB President and CEO Charles E. Snyder presented the Stanley W. Dreyer Spirit of Cooperation award to the international team responsible for bringing Dot-Coop to life. The team, made up of the National Cooperative Business Association, Poptel and the International Cooperative Alliance, was recognized for its commitment to promoting and strengthening cooperatives worldwide.

"Thanks to this group, today Dot-Coop is something tangible that all cooperatives can hold dear," said Snyder. "It is only fitting that the Dot-Coop team should receive this award here at the French embassy. This setting is representative of Dot-Coop's international role and will identify and unify us as cooperatives on the Internet and around the globe."

As a founding member of Dot-Coop, NCB has encouraged its members and affiliated cooperative organizations to register .coop domain names as well. To date, more than 200 .coop addresses have been registered by 82 cooperatives affiliated with NCB.

As a leader in the cooperative movement in the United States, the NCB family of companies provides a broad array of financial services to help cooperatives adapt, grow and compete in an ever-changing environment.

The annual meeting also featured remarks by Jean-Claude Detilleux, president of France's Cooperative Credit Group and National Cooperative Association, and James Gilleran, Director of the United States Office of Thrift Supervision. They addressed the state of the financial community and opportunities for cooperative businesses around the world.

.coop is one of seven new restricted Top Level Domains (TLD) recently approved by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). The .coop TLD launched on January 30, 2002. Top Level Domains (TLDs) are extensions that appear at the end of Internet addresses. .coop joins existing TLDs including .com, .org, .net, .edu and .gov.

The domain enables cooperatives worldwide to differentiate themselves on the Internet and gives consumers the opportunity to instantly recognize an online brand they can trust.

NCB's new Web site - www.ncb.coop -- has also expanded to allow visitors to access more information about NCB and cooperative businesses. And, it provides NCB customers streamlined access to online banking services and financial tools, including online loan calculators.

As part of the online changes, NCB employee emails have also changed to [e-mail] (name can be up to eight characters including first initial and last name). Both the old web site address (www.ncb.com) and employee emails will continue to work for the foreseeable future.

For more information, contact Jason Dring at 202-518-8047 or [e-mail].

National Cooperative Bank provides financial services to the nation's cooperatives and their members as well as other member-owned organizations and nonprofit endeavors. Chartered by Congress in 1978, National Cooperative Bank was privatized in 1981 as a cooperative financial services company that is owned by more than 1,800 of its customers.

Headquartered in Washington, D.C., NCB has offices in Alaska, California, Connecticut, Ohio and New York. To learn more about NCB, visit www.ncb.coop.