Banking

Retail lending origination excellence

Key capabilities for enabling sustained and profitable growth in Asia Pacific

Contents

Introduction...................................................................................................................................... 2 Strong prospects for growth in Asia Pacific lending..................................................................... 3

Growth in retail lending is driven by consumer demand and government policy

Headwinds in the Asian retail lending market. ............................................................................... 5

Rising expectations and growing appetite for risk from customers Increasing regulatory pressures Intense market competition and restrained profitability

Challenges to retail lending growth................................................................................................ 7 Capabilities required to achieve retail lending origination excellence. .......................................... 8
Empower people Establish lean and automated processes Build in flexible technologies

Conclusion. ........................................................................................................................................ 12

Introduction

Across Asia, consumer demand for credit cards, unsecured loans and mortgages has increased substantially in recent years. With positive demographic changes and favorable economic conditions, it is expected this growth will continue at pace. However, while banks are taking advantage of these trends, they face a number of challenges: greater competition; an increasingly sophisticated customer base; regulatory demands. These are making the achievement of lending portfolio growth, in a timely and profitable manner, extraordinarily challenging. The evidence for this is illustrated in declining interest margins, particularly for banks operating in Advanced Asia market. The need for focus by banks on retail lending origination excellence is not simply an option; its a necessity if banks are to close the gap between growth aspirations and execution readiness. To achieve retail lending origination excellence, banks need to develop and refine a number of capabilities across the value chain, thereby fostering revenue growth, cost

reduction, higher credit quality and, ultimately, profitability. However, one size does not fit all. Due to differences in the maturity levels of the various Asian banking markets, each country faces different challenges. We believe the capabilities that banks need to create or recalibrate will vary depending on the maturity of markets they operate in, or plan to enter in the future. Based on our analysis of market maturity we have segmented Asia into three groups and recommend each group focuses on a core set of capabilities to achieve retail lending origination excellence in the short to medium term. Advanced Asia (Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore) - it will be critical to focus on end-toend process automation using integrated technology platforms; standardization of processes via cross-product regional factories; investment in advanced segmentation, and analytics to support greater sales force effectiveness.

Maturing Asia (Malaysia, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand) it will be critical to focus on creating a customer origination mindset; empowering a skilled sales workforce; simplifying legacy business processes; introducing automated credit decision-making, and improving credit monitoring to enhance end-to-end profitability. Emerging Asia (China, India, Indonesia, Philippines) it will be critical to increase process control; develop simple sales tools and educate the sales force about product complexity and pricing; and improve credit risk management in order to achieve rapid and scalable growth. Banks looking to expand beyond their domestic borders need first to ensure they address the requirements of their home markets. Addressing their domestic challenges first will provide them with a platform - based on a high degree of standardization and operational discipline for geographic expansion across Asia, not only at speed, but also with the prospect of higher profitability.
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Strong prospects for growth in Asia Pacific lending

Retail lending1 growth is particularly evident in Emerging Asia and in selected other markets across Asia (ie Thailand, Singapore). Most notably, demand for retail lending is growing faster in comparison with other types of lending in Asia (Figure 1).

For example, government investment in telecommunications has improved the take up of mobile banking in rural populations, particularly in India and Indonesia, where large customer bases are being served with simple retail lending products. In Advanced Asia, increasing consumer sophistication (demonstrated by the rise in foreign purchases and investment in the property market) is driving growth in retail lending, with both unsecured debt and mortgage debt growing at an exceptional rate in 2010 (Figure 2). In contrast, banks in Maturing Asia tend to have a more balanced retail lending portfolio, with greater emphasis on non-mortgage products (eg personal loans, auto loans). The main challenge for banks in Maturing Asia is declining demand for credit cards (Figure 2). The reasons for this vary from country to country, but include stricter eligibility requirements in Malaysia, and increased competition in Taiwan.

Finally, mortgage and other lending products (ie personal loans, auto loans and other consumer loans) represent a greater share of the lending business in some Emerging Asia countries (Figure 2). For example, the Philippines rising average incomes and levels of education have given rise to strong growth in the credit card business. However, the rate of consumer credit defaults in the Philippines is almost triple the average in Asia2, so borrower quality remains a key issue.

Growth in retail lending is driven by consumer demand and government policy

Markets in Asia show significant differences in lending growth trends across the product portfolio. For example, mortgage lending is a key focus for banks in Advanced Asia due to the influx of professional migrants, increases in the proportion of young, first-home buyers, and the rise in foreign purchases. In addition, investors in these markets are more inclined to focus on the perceived low risk nature of property. Lending growth in Emerging Asia is expected to be the fastest, driven by strong domestic demand, a growing middle class and government policy designed to boost credit availability.

Figure 1: Growth in retail lending (%) vs. total lending in Asia, 2009 -20103
50% 41.7% 40% 37.6% 27.5% 21.5%

30%

22.9%
20%

14.4%
10%

18.5% 14.7%

19.7% 10.9% 10.1% 11.0% 8.4% 4.2%

22.2% 18.7% 11.8% 6.8% 16.2% 10.6% 10.2%

22.8% 19.6% 14.4%

9.3% 4.6%

1.7% -1.8% Singapore Japan Advanced Asia

2.5% Thailand Taiwan Maturing Asia India Philippines Indonesia China Emerging Asia

0% Australia -10% Malaysia Korea Hong Kong

2010 Retail Lending Growth (%) Source: Asian Central Banks

2010 Total Lending Growth (%)

Figure 2: Key components of retail lending and growth in mortgage and credit cards, 20104
100% 9.3% 3.9% 50% 21.8% 7.9% 60% 86.8% 70.4% 20% 74.2% 45.6% 5.8% 21.3% 4.5% 48.6% 6.8% 74.3% 50.7% 54.4% 50.9% 39.9% 42.4% 23.1% 2.6% 45.6% 46.3% 2.8% 34.7% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% -20% Australia Hong Kong Singapore Korea Malaysia Taiwan Thailand India Philippines -10%

25.5%

Growth of mortgage credit (%)

Mortgage Credit Card Others Growth of mortgage credit (%)

Growth of credit card receivables (%)

Growth of credit card receivables (%)

Source: Asian Central Banks

Headwinds in the Asian retail lending market

While there is very strong demand for retail lending products in Asia, other market forces will continue to challenge the momentum of growth. These diverse forces across each banking market will require distinct responses. What is certain is that an increasingly complex environment is making it more challenging for banks to grow lending revenues and sustain profitability.

by borrowing more (Figure 3). This is especially true in Maturing Asia where 39% of this group intend to increase their borrowing. Changing customer demand is driving banks to introduce innovative products, launch them faster and improve service levels to meet customer expectations. Banks will also need to ensure they continuously update their understanding of customers changing risk appetites, and develop their products and services accordingly.

Intense market competition and restrained profitability

Banks in Asia already face challenges in deriving revenue from interest income sources (Figure 4), as well as maintaining strong net interest margins. This is primarily due to a low-interest rate environment and intense market competition, most evident in Advanced and Maturing Asia. This challenge is compounded by inefficiencies in the credit systems that further test banks abilities to fully capture existing lending demand. Overall, profitability remains below pre-financial crisis levels, and recovery is slow across most markets in Asia. With these market forces in play, the ability to rapidly and cost effectively support retail lending growth is becoming increasingly challenging for banks in Asia (Figure 5).

Rising expectations and growing appetite for risk from customers

Asias banking markets are maturing alongside evolving customer expectations and appetite for risk. The burgeoning Asian middle class is driving demand for new, more sophisticated financial products and services. In Asia, the middle class is estimated to more than triple in size from 525 million in 2009 to 1.7 billion by 2020. In less than ten years, Asia could be home to more than half of the worlds middle class population.5 Nearly one-third (31%) of Asian mass affluent customers intend to increase their overall level of risk
5

Increasing regulatory pressures

As governments focus on maintaining the strength of their financial markets amid continuing global turmoil, risk has become a key consideration. Consequently, banks are being forced to conserve capital through slower loan growth, lower dividends and equity injections. This means that retail lending origination excellence will be critical not only for stronger revenue growth, but also for achieving higher credit quality and more prudent risk management.

Figure 3: Change in future borrowing risk appetite: Mass Affluent Customers

Total Asia Emerging Asia Maturing Asia Advanced Asia

17%

31%

16%

23%

23% 39%

12% 30% 58%

52%

61%

38%

Increase

Stay the same

Decrease

Source: Accenture Asian Banking Customer Survey, 2009

Figure 4: Interest revenue: Contribution to total revenue and margins6

90% 80% Contribution of Interest Income to Revenue (%) 70% 60% 50% 40% 3.5% 3.0% 2.5% 2.0% 1.5% 1.0%

Net Interest Margin (%)

2007

2008 Year

2009

2010

Contribution of net interest to revenue Advanced Asia Source: Accenture Analysis, 2011 Maturing Asia

Net interest margin Emerging Asia

Figure 5: Evolution of return of equity (Pre-tax ROE)7

45% 35% Pre-tax 25% ROE Percentage 15% 5% -5% 2007 2008 Year Advanced Asia Average Emerging Asia Average
Source: Accenture Analysis, 2011

2009

2010

Maturing Asia Average Asia Pacific Average

Challenges to retail lending growth

To secure rapid and profitable growth in retail lending, Asian banks need to address a number of challenges: Differentiation: A lack of focus on customer acquisition and product and service innovation is making it increasingly difficult for banks to meet evolving customer demands and grow revenue per customer. Pace: Origination processes tend to be slow for the customer this in turn reduces the sales forces ability to close in a timely manner. Slow origination processes cause high customer attrition and makes it hard to acquire new customers. Scale: Banks lack scalable platforms to facilitate future growth. Inadequate technology platforms mean banks cannot achieve significant cost efficiencies and realize optimum economies of scale. In addition, disparate and aging systems are expensive to maintain, are difficult to operate competitively and limit regional expansion. Regulation: Banks often do not have infrastructure that is compliant with new regulatory requirements. Banks ability to capture optimum revenue share is under pressure due to the double hit of a higher cost of capital and restrictions on leverage. Across the retail lending value chain (Figure 6), banks are suffering from reducing margins, low cross-sell ratios, high costs as a result of inefficiency and poor credit quality.

Figure 6: Retail lending value chain: Common challenges in Asia Product Management
Continuing margin pressures Product rationalization Blurring of definition of consumer versus business customers Speed to market with new products Rising customer attrition

Sales
Low sales per FTE ratio and low cross sales ratio Misalignment of rewards to strategic sales objectives Poor product knowledge High training costs per sales person Ineffective recruitment process

Origination
High levels of manual processing Excessive re-work and manual document handling by bank and 3rd parties Inconsistent credit decisioning and slow turnaround

Servicing and Monitoring

Multiple servicing centres are performing duplicate functions Significant overcapacity in service environments

Collections and Recoveries

Inconsistent productivity in collection areas Collection strategies are not targeted at high risk customers Multiple systems are inhibiting capabilities around customer-based collections Alliance management and arrangements creating inefficiencies

Credit Risk Management

No consistent view of customers Excessive override of credit policy resulting in sub-optimal lending Lack of decision tools and technology integration Inconsistent automated scoring or decisioning

Source: Accenture Analysis

Capabilities required to achieve retail lending origination excellence

To address the challenges they face and to capture the opportunities presented by growing consumer demand, banks in Asia need to develop retail lending origination capabilities in three key areas: first, they need to empower their people with new tools and methods to transform their retail lending origination and decision-making capabilities; second, they need to establish lean and automated processes across their lending operations; and third, they need to develop flexible and agile technology platforms.

1. Empower people
Banks need to improve the way they target and attract profitable customers. The key condition is a clear separation of customer origination from product origination. This can be achieved by: Creating a customer-origination mindset. Building an accountable and skilled sales and servicing workforce. Creating a customer-origination mindset Banks can significantly improve customer acquisition and retention if the sales and servicing workforce understands the profiles of customer segments, and has access to a 360 degree view of customers, with real time customer information updates.

Enabling a single view of the customer will also facilitate more effective cross-selling. Once customer segments are well defined and understood, products or product bundles need to be developed and targeted at the specific needs of each segment. Risk-based pricing and application of discounts for good lending customers is another point of differentiation that will enable the sales force to improve retention rates of customers based on their specific needs and value. Finally, to empower the sales force to achieve a credit decision for customers at the point of sale, banks need to reduce the manual input required to make credit decisions and use automated decision-making rules.

Case Study
Facing the prospect of increased competitive and margin pressures, one of the UK's largest mortgage lenders, and a leading player in savings and insurance products, partnered with Accenture to radically overhaul their mortgage application process across multiple channels. The mortgage business was managed as discrete businesses, had duplicate capabilities, systems and locations, and suffered from increasing complexity. This resulted in high levels of manual origination and intervention across pre-and post-completion processing. In addition, existing systems and processes did not support future requirements and growth.

A combined package / custom solution was implemented, which fundamentally changed the way mortgages were sold by:  Re-engineering the process from initial quotation to completion of the sale to cut interview times.  Delivery of a single system for use across the multiple channels (branch, call centre, third party originators, estate agents) with functionality to support the new process.  Integrating an online front end, built around the Microsoft toolset. The investment in the endto end lending origination program met market demand and achieved significant cost reductions. Overall the bank improved its cross-sell ratio by 10%, increased customer

satisfaction from 40% to 85% and drove a 30% reduction in processing times.

Building an accountable and skilled sales and servicing workforce Increased customer centricity requires better data quality, not only to improve customer insight and engagement, but also to enhance generation of quality leads. Strong sales management throughout the life of an opportunity is essential to ensure high conversion from lead to deal. For example, sales workforce should be able to conduct needs analysis and utilize demonstration tools during the origination process, as well as have end-to-end case ownership and deal status from all channels throughout the opportunity lifecycle. To enable sales representatives to take accountability for customer needs throughout the entire lifecycle, banks also need to focus on tying targets and remuneration mechanisms to sales force performance.

Empowering people with new tools and methods that can improve decision-making closer to the customer will require banks to invest in developing end-to-end origination capabilities.

credit rules; reducing customer and internal document requirements; shortening verification and quality check overlaps, among other measures.

2. Establish lean and automated processes

Improving the efficiency of the end-toend origination process is achieved by: Simplifying business rules and parameters. Automating end-to-end processes. Re-engineering business processes and creating operations factories.

Automating end-to-end processes

A number of key capabilities have become standard in high performance retail lenders, including: Pre-population and data validation to reduce errors. Automated application of business and credit rules to produce high levels of decisioning at the point of sale (ie pre-approved limits). Automation of key internal (eg account history) and external interfaces (eg valuers). Significant automation of end to end workflows (ie early warning systems and automatic notification of upcoming and overdue reviews). Automation of all customer documents point of sale.

Simplifying business rules and parameters

Banks can achieve significant improvements in their retail lending origination processes by: reducing customer data requirements (including signatures); enabling customers to provide information only once; eliminating legacy and redundant

Case Study
A global bank sought to transform its mortgage model and implement a new origination platform integrated with existing bank core systems to better respond to market competition. The banks mortgage business was facing aggressive competition and continuing pressure on interest margins. The credit challenges it faced included highly manual processes, complex technology across its credit divisions and diverse focus on credit by each business unit. The bank invested in a new loan origination solution which integrated with its CRM, credit decisioning, and several other existing bank / external systems. Following the completion of the full rollout of the system, the bank hopes to increase automated credit scoring from around 60% to 85-90% of mortgage applications, reduce process handoffs from up to 12 to 1-4 for a simple application, increase sales and reduce costs across the business.

 Implementation of collateral management technology that supports complex cross-collateral deals and maintenance. Automated account setup, E-conveyancing and other settlement tasks.

The key implications associated with the creation of credit origination and fulfillment factories include: The ability to create regional capabilities needs to be based on an assessment of the level of standardization permitted by local policy, regulation and products. Leveraging common capabilities across the different parts of the lending business (retail, business, corporate). Banks that invest in these capabilities will successfully realize economies of scale while pursuing expansion across Asian banking markets.

Re-engineering business processes and creating operations factories

For banks targeting geographic expansion, it is critical that they first simplify and automate their retail lending origination processes in their country of origin, or markets where they have a strong presence, before standardizing across the region. Creation of standardized credit origination and fulfillment factories across products and business lines will strengthen banks' ability to execute their regional growth strategies in Asia (Figure 7).

Figure 7: Example loan factory: Originations and fulfillment

Origination Segments Product/Channels Mortgage-Brand A Mortgage-Direct Retail Country/ Geography 1 Mortgage-Broker Personal Loan-Direct Country/ Geography 2 Personal Loan-Branch Revolving Business Flexible Term Small Business Retail Retail Origination and Fulfilment Shared Service Small Business Servicing Shared Service Retail Non mortgage collections Small Business Mortgage Shared Service Product & Pricing Docs. & Credit Assessment Fulfilment Servicing Collections Recoveries

Recoveries Shared Service

Country/ Geography 3

Country/ Geography 4 Revolving Corporate Trade Commercial Mortgage Specialised Specialised Lending Corporate Origination Corporate Servicing

Corporate Collections and Recoveries Shared Service

Source: Accenture Analysis

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3. Build in flexible technologies

To achieve and maintain the levels of process automation implied above, banks need to invest in enterprise technology platforms that are scalable and component-driven. This is achievable by: Adopting SOA enabled applications that can easily be integrated with legacy systems and third parties, and that reuse common functionality across lending products. Introducing parameterized systems that can be maintained by the business user population (ie user control of credit policy and other business rules).

Introducing virtualized infrastructure and componentized architecture (ie to support multi-channel architectures that improve the ability to create different offers by channel). Investing in scalable and componentbased enterprise technology platforms enables banks to reduce costs, improve scale and enhance credit quality.

Case Study
A multi-national European bank wished to develop a future state strategy for their commercial lending processes and technology across all products or segments. The bank faced significant business challenges within their commercial lending origination, fulfillment, and servicing space, including processing and maintenance inefficiencies; regulatory pressure regarding consistency of data capture and data reporting challenges due to the fragmentation of their systems. The bank adopted a number of processes and tools to overcome these challenges including adjusting their core platforms to enable future organic or M&A growth;
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implementing Straightthrough-processing (STP) and multiple loan paths; incorporating integrated tools and processes to support the lending lifecycle, and the adoption of improved data lineage. The program resulted in a reduction of re-keys and cycle time along with 40+% reductions in legacy tools, and an expected return on investment of $30M.

Conclusion
The most important issues facing banks in Advanced Asia include low retail lending rates, an overemphasis on mortgages, high rates of customer attrition, net interest margin pressure, and the need to accelerate product rationalization. To manage these challenges, banks in Advanced Asia need to focus on growing revenue through a more balanced portfolio of lending products while taking a disciplined approach to cost reduction. In contrast, banks in Maturing Asia are facing the lowest growth rate in retail lending across the region, thereby increasing the pressure on profitability exacerbated by an increasingly sophisticated customer base. In response, banks based in this region will need to focus on improving profitability and credit quality. Profitability will depend on banks ability to introduce new products and services faster (e.g., to increase volume and rate of growth in credit cards), understand and acquire new customers outside of their home markets, while simplifying business and process complexity. Finally, as banks in this market seek to grow new product segments (e.g. credit cards) credit risk management will be critical to ensure asset quality. Finally, banks in Emerging Asia are facing increasing non-performing loans and limited ability to scale efficiently in a high growth economic environment. In response, they need to focus on operational mastery and credit quality. Pricing optimization, operational efficiency aimed at reducing cost to serve, and scale will be critical as banks aspire to expand revenue, particularly in mortgages and credit cards. Better mastery of credit risk, collections and recovery processes will be essential to improve credit quality. Investment in key retail lending capabilities will therefore be a cornerstone for future revenue growth, cost containment and effective risk management the three pillars of rapid and profitable lending business growth in Asia. Banks can achieve significant performance improvements by focusing on core capabilities across the retail lending value chain through an integrated lending program (Figure 8).

Figure 8. Target outcomes of mortgage re-engineering Selected Credit & Lending Metrics
Origination Rework Rates

Poor Performers
20% - 50%

Average Performers
10% - 20%

Good Performers
5% - 10%

Category Description

Proportion of lending applications that are handled more than once by sales / credit to correct errors or clarify customer data prior to disbursement Average time taken to process an application from start to finish, including idle time but excluding time waiting for customer response Average time taken to generate loan documents and proceed to disbursement activities Number of unique customer touch points / enquiries for a customer applying for business loan Time taken to capture and document all relevant application-specific information for a business loan directly into the originations system Proportion of loans acceptances undergone assessment of qualification, pricing and underwriting, using automated decisioning tools

Average Lending Turnaround (Days)*

20 - 30+

5 - 20

1 - 10

Average Doc Preparation Times (Mins)* Customer Touch Points in Origination (#) Data Capture (Mins)*

50+

30 - 50

5 - 30

8+

4-8

1-4

60+

45-60

40-45

Auto Decisioning %

<30%

60-70%

85-95%

Note: (*) Range represents the difference in types/complexity of deals Source: Accenture experience

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The extent to which banks are able to achieve excellence in retail lending origination will hinge on their ability to master a number of key capabilities. Mastering these will contribute to sustaining rapid and profitable growth in their respective markets. Each market, in turn, will require banks to address distinct sets of issues and objectives. Figure 9 provides a summary of the capabilities banks need to prioritize to build or recalibrate according to the performance imperatives and challenges in their specific markets.

Figure 9. Capability Priority Framework Asia Pacific banking markets

Advanced Asia Advanced segmentation and predictive analytics to support sales force effectiveness in targeting the right lending customers Process standardization and establishment of cross-product regional process factories Maturing Asia Sales force effectiveness in generating leads during new customer acquisition Emerging Asia Simple sales tools and staff education to improve pricing, manage servicing and sales capacity

Empower people

Establish lean and automated processes

Simplification of legacy process complexities (i.e. elimination of old credit rules; reduced customer data requirements, improved verification)

Greater process control (i.e., increased data quality, process measurement, and shift of process from branch to central hubs)

Build in flexible technologies

Integrated technology platform with a data capture, rules mgmt, credit scoring, workflow, collateral mgmt and other capabilities

Improved data capture, automated credit decisioning and basic workflow capabilities

Simple credit scoring (i.e. for cards and small loans) and credit monitoring tools

High priority Source: Accenture Analysis and Experience

Medium priority

Lower priority

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References
1 Retail lending constitutes credit related to credit cards, personal loans, auto loans, mortgage loans etc. Total lending includes non-consumer credit. Data for India is as of the 2011 financial reporting period. 2 Source: Credit card usage in the Philippines, Technograph, May 2011. 3 Data for India is as of the 2011 financial reporting period. Data is not available for total loans in Philippines. Components vary subject to availability of data per country. 4 Data on loan breakdown by category is not available for Japan, Indonesia and China. Others include personal loans, auto loans and other consumer loans. Credit card data is not available for Japan, Thailand, Indonesia, and China. 5 Source: OECD, The Emerging Middle Class in Developing Countries, January 2010. 6 Based values in US$, derived from sample of 78 banks in Asia. Net Interest Margin is calculated as Net Interest income divided by earning assets. 7 Based values in US$, derived from sample of 78 banks in Asia. Pre-Tax ROE is calculated as Profit Before Tax (PBT) divided by Shareholders Equity.

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About the Authors

Andrew Pitcher Andrew Pitcher is a Senior Executive and Managing Director of Accentures Asia Pacific Banking Industry program. Andrew has over 19 years experience across all aspects of financial services, from consumer and commercial banking through to program delivery, technology line management and transformation. Andrew commenced his career as a line banker, and has functional experience in across CRM, lending, loan servicing and collections. David Levi David Levi is a Senior Manager in Accentures Financial Services Strategy practice based in Singapore. David has worked with banks in over 10 different countries (last 3 years in Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore) and specializes in working with corporate executives to develop and design new innovative customer centric and credit lending visions, operating models and transformation programs. As Program Manager for major banks, he has also helped many global banks implement and realize their credit visions in order to become high performance banks. Manisha Sahni Manisha Sahni is a Manager in the Accenture Management Consulting Innovation Centre, where she has led several thought leadership initiatives primarily for the Banking industry. She has diverse range of experience across Financial Services, Telecom and Oil & Gas Industries in Asia & the Middle East. Her management consulting and industry experience spans across the areas of Strategy Planning, Investment Management, and M&A. She is based in Singapore.

Copyright 2011 Accenture All rights reserved. Accenture, its logo, and High Performance Delivered are trademarks of Accenture.

Accenture Credit Services

Accenture Credit Services offers consulting, process reengineering, systems integration and business process outsourcing services for residential mortgage, commercial lending, leasing and automotive finance lenders looking to transform and industrialize their operations. The services are designed to deliver significant customer service, efficiency, and quality improvements to our clients lending business. For further information on Accenture Credit Services, or any material included in this point of view, please contact Andrew Pitcher at andrew.r.pitcher@accenture.com

About Accenture
Accenture is a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company, with more than 223,000 people serving clients in more than 120 countries. Combining unparalleled experience, comprehensive capabilities across all industries and business functions, and extensive research on the worlds most successful companies, Accenture collaborates with clients to help them become high-performance businesses and governments. The company generated net revenues of US$21.6 billion for the fiscal year ended Aug. 31, 2010. Its home page is www.accenture.com.

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