Business Editors/High Tech Writers

CARY, N.C.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 19, 2002--U.S. Bancorp (NYSE:USB), the eighth-largest financial services holding company in America, has signed a multi-year agreement with SAS, the leader in business intelligence, to improve scoring of new credit applications and existing accounts.

A SAS customer for more than 20 years, U.S. Bancorp selected SAS® Credit Scoring to improve credit decisions and reduce credit loss, which will increase company profits.

SAS Credit Scoring helps banks reduce write-offs by giving them the capabilities needed to build and maintain an in-house credit scorecard-development process. The solution enables lenders to develop, implement and validate scorecards more quickly and inexpensively, with more flexibility than an outsourcing alternative. Banks can then enter new markets more rapidly, as well as maintain acceptable risk levels in existing markets. Leveraging both application and behavioral scorecards, banks can assess risk for existing customers and provide a basis for scoring loan applicants for virtually all lending lines including credit card, personal, home equity, mortgage, auto, etc.

U.S. Bancorp expects to gain a significant competitive advantage by using SAS Credit Scoring to:

--  Shorten the time frame from development to implementation of

credit scorecards,

--  Segment customer populations into high-reward and high-risk

customers quickly and accurately, and

--  Increase the number of scorecards the bank can develop

in-house to better segment customers for targeted marketing.

The reduced turnaround time for the development, implementation and validation of new scorecards and the ability to monitor existing scorecard performance allows U.S. Bancorp to respond more swiftly to business development opportunities and pressing strategic initiatives.

By bringing these credit services in-house with the SAS solution, U.S. Bancorp's risk management group can understand the specific risk characteristics that lead to delinquency, default and, ultimately, bad debt. They can also leverage the SAS solution to both transform their various risk models into points based scorecards and to make appropriate approval criteria without relying on external scorecard development services. Moreover, U.S. Bancorp will be able to validate and test performance of acquired credit scorecards with greater ease. SAS Credit Scoring provides U.S. Bancorp greater flexibility in segmenting portfolios to improve the accuracy of its credit decisions on both the origination and servicing side of the business.

With SAS Credit Scoring, my team can develop and implement scorecards faster, cheaper, and with greater accuracy for an optimal risk/reward segmentation, said Rajinder Singh, senior vice president of risk/reward management at U.S. Bancorp. In addition, my risk managers will be armed with an efficient tool to identify new opportunities for profitable growth and for rigorous monitoring of the scorecards' performance. We naturally looked towards SAS for these functionalities.

U.S. Bancorp expects to shrink its credit-related losses by leveraging SAS Credit Scoring with the internal modeling and risk management expertise of its risk management group. Based on our successful history of partnering with SAS, I am confident that this new technology will enable us to be more effective at optimizing our risk/reward trade-offs by reducing the loss rate and increasing the returns on our various portfolios, said Singh.

U.S. Bancorp recognizes that SAS Credit Scoring provides critical intelligence capabilities to address a specific business need in the banking industry, said Ellen Joyner, worldwide strategist for financial services at SAS. Their risk managers can mitigate credit losses which directly affects their organization's bottom line.

About U.S. Bancorp

Minneapolis-based U.S. Bancorp (NYSE:USB), with assets in excess of $173 billion, is the eighth-largest financial services holding company in the United States. The company operates 2,131 banking offices and 4,818 ATMs, and provides a comprehensive line of banking, brokerage, insurance, investment, mortgage, trust and payment services products to consumers, businesses and institutions. U.S. Bancorp is home of the Five Star Service Guarantee which assures customers of certain key banking benefits and services or customers will be paid for their inconvenience. U.S. Bancorp is the parent company of U.S. Bank. Visit U.S. Bancorp on the Web at www.usbank.com.

About SAS

SAS is the market leader in providing a new generation of business intelligence software and services that create true enterprise intelligence. SAS solutions are used at more than 38,000 sites - including 98 of the top 100 businesses on the Fortune 500 - to develop more profitable relationships with customers and suppliers; to enable better, more accurate and informed decisions; and to drive organizations forward. SAS is the only vendor that completely integrates leading data warehousing, analytics and traditional BI applications to create intelligence from massive amounts of data. For more than 25 years, SAS has been giving customers around the world The Power to Know™. Visit us at www.sas.com.

SAS and all other SAS Institute Inc. product or service names are registered trademarks or trademarks of SAS Institute Inc. in the USA and other countries.®indicates USA registration. Copyright©2002 SAS Institute Inc. Cary, NC, USA. Other brand and product names are trademarks of their respective companies.

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CONTACT: SAS, Cary

Kris Balic or Mike Nemecek, 919/531-0624 or 919/531-5140

Kris.Balic@sas.com or Mike.Nemecek@sas.com

www.sas.com/newsroom

KEYWORD: ARIZONA CALIFORNIA COLORADO CONNECTICUT FLORIDA GEORGIA ILLINOIS INDIANA KANSAS LOUISIANA MARYLAND MASSACHUSETTS MICHIGAN MINNESOTA MISSOURI NORTH CAROLINA NEW JERSEY NEW YORK OHIO OKLAHOMA OREGON PENNSYLVANIA TENNESSEE TEXAS VIRGINIA WASHINGTON WISCONSIN

INDUSTRY KEYWORD: BANKING COMPUTERS/ELECTRONICS INSURANCE SOFTWARE

SOURCE: SAS

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