Mortgage administration at the Bank was previously outsourced to a third party, and the migration to Profile means that the Bank will now directly manage the systems and processes needed to provide first-class customer service. Scottish Widows Bank staff will be able to take ownership of the end-to-end process as all mortgage loans, including mortgage deposit accounts and mortgage reserve accounts, will be on one system. This enables more efficient processing, is particularly beneficial to handling support for offset mortgage products and allows staff to have improved influence over the complete customer experience.

"This implementation is a significant and positive change for the Bank," said Graeme Hartop, Managing Director, Scottish Widows Bank. "By utilising the leading-edge technology provided in Profile, we now have a more cost- effective operating model that enables us to react more quickly to changes in the market and allows us to leverage our customer service practice."

Scottish Widows Bank, founded in 1995, is wholly owned by Scottish Widows Group Limited and offers a range of High Interest Deposit Accounts, Mortgages, Lifetime Mortgages and Policy Loans. Scottish Widows is one of Britain's strongest and most respected financial institutions and the Bank is proud to continue the tradition of providing quality products and services.

To enable the Bank to have full responsibility of its mortgage administration, the installation of Profile was achieved following many months of hard work by a dedicated project team. The close-working partnership will continue to support further work to migrate all mortgage accounts to Profile with Fidelity resources on site to ensure the project runs smoothly and on time.

"Bringing the administration on to Profile gives the Bank greater flexibility in bringing its financial product offerings to the market place and enables it to better direct the servicing of its mortgage products," said Jim Wilson, President, Fidelity Information Services, International Division. "This move also provides Scottish Widows Bank with operational efficiency improvements and cost savings."

"The Bank has seen tremendous growth in its niche business over the last 10 years and, with new business volumes at record highs, the need for a system that offers increased automation, efficient processing and flexible functionality is vital to its strategy for sustainable growth."

Trusted by over 350 financial institutions in 18 countries, Profile is a multi-currency, multi-lingual core bank processing solution providing a highly scalable architecture for an integrated banking environment. It has real-time capabilities and offers operational efficiencies that can significantly enhance the competitiveness of a financial institution.

Scottish Widows Group is part of the LloydsTSB Group of companies. Profile currently administers other systems for the LloydsTSB Group, including the Group's offset mortgage facility. "This latest expansion of our relationship with the Group is an important endorsement of the success of the system in delivering real strategic benefits to the organisation," added Wilson.

All new mortgage business at Scottish Widows Bank is now being processed on Profile and it is planned that all existing mortgage accounts established prior to June will be migrated on to Profile in the autumn of 2005.