KBC, A TOP-3 BANCASSURER IN BELGIUM, SELECTS COURION FOR AUTOMATED PASSWORD MANAGEMENT (email this article)

FRAMINGHAM, Mass. — November 17, 2003 — Courion (Company Profile, Past Stories, Case Studies) Corporation, a leading provider of self-service identity management solutions, today announced that KBC, a top-3 bancassurer in Belgium, has selected its leading password management solution PasswordCourier® to automate the password reset and synchronization process for its 15,000 employees.

KBC considered Courion’s market leadership, technology and customer references before deciding it had the best technology and services to enable its employees to quickly and efficiently reset their own passwords without having to call the help desk.  KBC’s help desk was fielding 3,000 calls each month requesting password resets.  Automating these resets with PasswordCourier will provide KBC significant cost savings and increased productivity by empowering end users to resolve the issue themselves.  

“The number of calls to our help desk each month, especially for requesting password resets, presents a significant draw on our resources,” said Patrick Toeback, director IT, KBC.  “Therefore, we are putting significant emphasis on self-service, encouraging employees to resolve their own IT issues such as password reset and IT resource requests.  By putting self-service solutions in place, employees across corporate and retail banking are able to get the help they need outside of normal business hours, which increases their ‘up-time’ while allowing the help desk to concentrate on more strategic projects.”

KBC’s PasswordCourier rollout initially targeted Windows NT and RACF accounts, as the majority of the password reset calls to the help desk were for these two platforms.  More than 50 percent of KBC’s employees have registered their profiles thus far and are using PasswordCourier to reset their passwords.  The remaining 50 percent are expected to have access by the end of the year.  

“KBC has taken a ‘broad and shallow’ approach to eliminate its greatest pain point first,” said Themis Papageorge, vice president of services, Courion.  “While Courion strives to appeal to all types of companies and their users, KBC’s culture has been quick to embrace the self-service orientation of our products.  By automating the majority of their password resets calls with PasswordCourier, KBC will realize significant cost savings and has further ingrained self-service into the corporate culture, laying the groundwork for future self-service identity management solutions to easily fall into place.”

About KBC
The KBC Bank & Insurance Group was established in 1998 following the merger of three Belgian financial institutions. The Group's corporate history is testament to the successful expansion (through green field investments, strategic participations and corporate takeovers) into growth countries of Central Europe which are soon to join the European Union, viz. Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Slovenia. Through its subsidiaries, strategic participations, branches and representatives offices, KBC employs some 45.000 people and caters for ten million customers in thirty (mainly European) countries.
KBC has the ambition to be an independent, medium-sized, multi-channel bancassurer for private persons and medium-sized enterprises in selected European countries, with expertise in asset, management and the financial markets. It endeavours to achieve high profitability targets through efficiency, customer-centricity, employee-friendly policies and sound risk management.

About Courion
Courion Corporation is a leading provider of self-service identity management solutions that help enterprises manage the access rights and credentials of employees, business partners and customers with more speed, more security and less cost.  Courion’s Identity Management SuiteÔ, anchored by its AccountCourier® user provisioning and PasswordCourier password management product lines, securely automates the resolution of common operational challenges such as user account setup and deletion and password reset and synchronization.  Courion’s non-invasive, self-service architecture enforces security policies, while providing measurable cost-savings, operational efficiencies and productivity improvements.
Courion’s customers include industry leaders such as American Electric Power, The Boeing Company, Children’s Hospital Boston, Fannie Mae, GE, Office Depot, SunTrust Banks, government institutions such as the U.S. Internal Revenue Service and U.S. Census Bureau, and large not-for-profit organizations such as Kaiser Permanente.  Courion is funded by QuestMark Partners, JMI Equity and other private investors.  For more information, contact Courion’s headquarters in Framingham, MA, USA at  508-879-8400 or visit www.courion.com.

2003 Courion Corporation. All rights reserved. Courion, PasswordCourier and AccountCourier are trademarks of Courion Corporation. All other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners.