ATLANTA, Feb. 10, 2004 (PRIMEZONE) -- In a joint announcement, Moody's KMV, a subsidiary of Moody's Corporation and iLumen Inc. today announced a strategic relationship to design an integration of iLumen's iMonitor(r) with Moody's KMV Financial Analyst to provide enhanced credit monitoring and financial data management to financial institutions. The centerpiece of the relationship, iLumen's iMonitor financial monitoring network, provides technology for acquiring, standardizing and communicating electronically-enabled financial accounting data directly into Moody's KMV Financial Analyst (MFA) software. MFA is a widely used analysis and modeling tool employed by banks and financial institutions for portfolio management, commercial lending, and other credit decisioning functions.
"The integration of iMonitor with the Moody's KMV suite of data collection and credit analysis tools represents a powerful offering to our customers," said Arnie Note, Moody's KMV Chief Financial Officer and Co-Head of Product Management. "This relationship answers a critical need for lending institutions to enhance their connection to business customers while managing their credit risk."
"iMonitor is a secure, scaleable solution for providing consistent financial reporting data to allow MFA's expert systems to identify key credit issues, forecast financial indicators, and store critical borrower information for high-level risk analysis," said Robert H. Woosley, co-founder and chief executive officer of iLumen. "Prior to iMonitor, most data from small mid-market enterprise customers lacked uniform structure and often had to be entered by hand, making it difficult to analyze and nearly impossible to benchmark consistently."
iMonitor is an automated browser-based data import engine and financial monitoring system that enables the uploading of financial information from any end-user accounting software, as well as from CPA trial balance systems. iMonitor is being integrated into the customer data gathering and analysis processes of banks and accounting firms across the US including Wachovia Corp. (currently running a pilot) and RSM McGladrey.
"iMonitor's ability to automate and standardize periodic business customer financial submissions and send that data automatically to Moody's KMV Financial Analyst has the potential to significantly improve efficiency in acquiring and processing borrower data," said Raj Gopal, Senior Vice President in Portfolio Management, Wachovia Corp. "The ultimate benefit of electronically-enabled data is an overall improvement in the quality and transparency of our credit data. iMonitor would enable our bankers to monitor the financial performance and needs of their customers in a more timely fashion, while providing valuable information back to those customers through the product's content-rich dashboard."
About Moody's KMV
Moody's KMV (MKMV), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Moody's Corporation, is the world's leading provider of quantitative credit risk analysis tools to lenders, investors, and corporations. MKMV's tools provide current default probabilities, recovery estimates, valuations and correlations, and are widely used to assess portfolio risk/return. Serving over 2,000 clients in 80 countries, including most of the world's 100 largest financial institutions, MKMV maintains the largest database of corporate defaults in the world. In addition to its San Francisco headquarters, MKMV has offices around the world to serve its global customer base. Further information is available at www.moodyskmv.com.
About Moody's Corporation:
Moody's Corporation (NYSE:MCO) is the parent company of Moody's Investors Service, a leading provider of credit ratings, research and analysis covering debt instruments and securities in the global capital markets, and Moody's KMV, a credit risk management technology firm serving the world's largest financial institutions. The corporation, which employs more than 2,000 associates in 17 countries, had reported revenue of $1.0 billion in 2002. Further information is available at www.moodys.com.
About iLumen
iLumen Inc. is a financial information technology company that delivers and manages private-company data gathering and analysis solutions to solve critical problems in risk management, financial compliance and financial oversight within the banking, accounting and corporate environments. iLumen's services are based on a proprietary financial data warehousing engine that automates, and standardizes the gathering, mapping, analysis and benchmarking of electronic accounting data from private companies. For more information visit www.ilumen.com or call 888-663-8003. iLumen(tm) and iMonitor(r) are trademarks of iLumen Inc., all rights reserved.