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November 18, 2008

LEVEL FOUR AMERICAS LATEST SURVEY FINDS CONSUMERS EXPERIENCE FREQUENT ATM DOWNTIME

- ATM network availability is a concern for U.S. consumers -

ORLANDO, Fla., Nov. 18, 2008 – According to surveys conducted by Harris Interactive® in June and August on behalf of Level Four Americas LLC, a leading supplier of open standards-based ATM software, 35 percent of U.S. adults have had ATMs unavailable for their use in the past 12 months; and among these adults, 42 percent have experienced unavailability at the ATM three or more times in the past 12 months.  The news was announced at the BAI Retail Delivery Conference & Expo in Orlando.

As key customer touch points, ATM network availability is of critical importance for financial institutions in terms of customer retention.  According to another consumer survey conducted by Harris Interactive in June, 45 percent of U.S. banking consumers would be likely to switch banks if their bank’s network of ATMs was often unreliable.

These survey findings further underscore the need for banks to improve the reliability of their ATM network to guarantee customer demands and expectations are met.  In today’s competitive banking environment, it is crucial for banks to ensure that their ATM networks are thoroughly tested prior to deployment, and employ modern monitoring techniques to minimize ATM downtime and preserve customer loyalty.

Level Four’s BRIDGE:control product assists banks in ensuring ATM uptime by employing state-of-the-art methods to deliver reliability at the ATM.  BRIDGE:control is helping banks maximize their ATM uptime by using techniques such as remote software maintenance, predictive hardware maintenance and direct-to-device diagnostics.  Additionally BRIDGE:test enables banks to automate their software Quality Assurance testing, minimizing the chance of software failures which result in downtime.

“In today’s competitive banking environment, customer retention is key to the success of financial institutions,” said Steven Lund, president of Level Four Americas LLC.  “At every banking channel consumers demand a high level of service.  Ensuring that ATM networks are consistently reliable will improve customer satisfaction, which will ultimately have a positive impact on revenue.”

About The Surveys:
These ATMs surveys were conducted online within the United States by Harris Interactive on behalf of Level Four Americas LLC between June 19 and June 23, 2008 among 2,524 U.S. adults ages 18+, of whom 2,467 have a primary financial institution which has ATMs and between August 1 and August 5, 2008 among 2,175 U.S. adults ages 18+, of whom 1,945 have a primary financial institution which has ATMs. These online surveys are not based on a probability sample and therefore no estimate of theoretical sampling error can be calculated. For complete survey methodologies, including weighting variables, please contact Joy Harper or Cristi Murray.

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About Level Four
Level Four’s development and testing products have been built to address the needs of ATM deployers seeking to maximize their investment in the ATM channel.

BRIDGE:test is targeted at banks and ATM deployers who are running, or seeking to run, a modern ATM network based on the industry-wide CEN/XFS open standard.  BRIDGE:test provides an enterprise regression test platform to test CEN/XFS based applications in a controlled environment. Customers gain benefits of the breadth of testing and improved quality assurance as well as reduced time to market due to increased testing efficiencies.

ATM Developer is targeted at banks and ATM deployers who are running states & screens protocol controlled applications such as those based on NDC or 912. ATM Developer provide a graphical environment in which customers can maintain the configuration file from creation to validation.

Since 1995, Level Four has built an impressive global customer base of banks and payments processors including, Royal Bank of Scotland, Lloyds TSB, Bank of America, CIBC, VocaLink and Standard Bank of South Africa. Headquartered in Dunfermline, Scotland, Level Four has offices in Dubai and Charlotte, NC, USA. http://www.levelfour.com  

Level Four’s online ATM industry resource: www.atmindustryinfo.com 

For more information, please contact:
Nicola Koronka
Hotwire
+44 (0) 20 7608 4673
levelfour 'at' hotwirepr.com