NEWS RELEASE
FOR: Simplex Consulting Ltd.

October 11, 2006

Scottish Widows Joins SWIFTNet Funds via the Simplex Service Bureau

LONDON, ENGLAND - October 11, 2006. Scottish Widows, one of Europe ’s leading asset management and pensions investment company based in Edinburgh , today announces a commitment to join SWIFTNet Funds via the Simplex Service Bureau.

Scottish Widows is always looking to improve business processes and offer enhanced customer service, and has decided to use the new SWIFTNet Funds ISO 20022 XML schemas as a standard for linking to a number of its major investing counterparties, offering improved interoperability, enabling improved straight through processing and hence enhancing business efficiency.

The SWIFT XML implementation uses the InterAct protocol to enable secure exchange of fund related business data over the SWIFT network. Many leading fund managers have considered the benefits of joining SWIFTNet Funds, and early adopters include several of the major players.

After considering a number of options to connect to the SWIFT network to leverage the new SWIFTNet Funds XML standards, Scottish Widows decided on connection to SWIFT via the Simplex Service Bureau.

The Simplex Bureau which is accredited by SWIFT, and uses SWIFT-accredited technology from the Geneva-based software vendor Sterci, was the obvious choice for achieving a rapid implementation, and delivery at an economic cost of ownership, since it does not require the deployment of in-house software and the associated management overhead.

Simplex Chief Executive Dave Reeve commented ‘It is a pleasure to welcome Scottish Widows to the growing user base of our Service Bureau which has a particularly elegant and scalable solution for Funds applying the software of our partner Sterci. We look forward to working closely with Scottish Widows to ensure they achieve the benefits of improved customer operability that the SWIFTNet Funds initiative enables’.

Edward Glyn, Commercial Manager - Investment Funds, SWIFT, commented "we're delighted to see such a prominent UK institution as Scottish Widows committing to operational excellence in the asset management space. Leveraging the first-rate solutions of Simplex and Sterci will enable many such funds players to successfully increase STP and drive value to their customers. We look forward to welcoming Scottish Widows to the SWIFTNet Funds ISO 20022 community."

About Simplex:

Since 1997, Simplex has been recognized as one of the European leaders in supporting major organisations from banks, to asset houses, and corporates in improving their straight through processing rates and hence reducing costs and risk.

The Simplex Service Bureau, hosted in secure datacentres offers a low cost route to connecting to SWIFT eliminating the need for procuring and maintaining an in-house SWIFT connection and offers a flexible solution for all SWIFTNet services from FIN to FileAct and InterAct on a single platform.

At the beginning of 2005 Simplex announced unique ASP propositions: Simplex's Payments Administration System (PAYS) for Banking & Corporates provides a range of payments related services including Message Transformation, Invoice Matching, Manual Payment Creation, Payment Authorisation, Delivery, and Reporting. Simplex's Securities Administration Solution (SecAS) for the securities market provides modules for corporate actions, Electronic Trade Confirmation (ETC), Electronic Trade Delivery (ETD), Reconciliations, and SWIFT.

About Sterci:

Sterci is a leading provider of SWIFT interface and connectivity solutions and is itself one of the early adopters of SWIFTNet InterAct and the ISO 20022 XML schemas for FUNDS, working with some of the major players.

The Sterci software application STELINK and its complementary XML-based product STEFORM provide one of the very few scalable end to end XML solutions for SWIFTNet available today. STEFORM is one of only three products worldwide to gain the prestigious SWIFTNet Ready label for Funds.

About Scottish Widows:

Scottish Widows was founded in 1815 as Scotland ’s first mutual life office. Becoming part of the Lloyds TSB Group in 2000, Scottish Widows has become one of the most recognised brands in the life, pensions and investment industry in the UK . The product range includes ordinary long term insurance, such as life assurance, pensions, annuities and permanent health insurance, and savings and investment products. Using a multi-sales network of Financial Advisers, Direct Sales, Direct Marketing, the Internet and via the branch network of Lloyds TSB, Scottish Widows currently employs about 4,000 people.

About SWIFT:

SWIFT is the industry-owned co-operative supplying secure, standardised messaging services and interface software to nearly 8,000 financial institutions in 206 countries and territories. SWIFT members include banks, broker-dealers and investment managers. The broader SWIFT community encompasses corporates as well as market infrastructures in payments, securities, treasury and trade. Over the past 10 years, SWIFT message prices have been reduced over 80% and system availability approaches 5x9 reliability – 99.999% of uptime.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT:

Philip Walsh
Head of Business Development
Simplex Consulting Ltd.
Tel: +44 (0) 20 7653 1380