KBC Group (Belgium) Selects Cognizant to Adapt to a Changing ICT Market with Superior Operational Agility and Excellence

BRUSSELS and TEANECK, New Jersey, Oct. 3, 2013

BRUSSELS and TEANECK, New Jersey, Oct. 3, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Cognizant (NASDAQ: CTSH) today announced that it has been selected by the KBC group (NYSE Euronext: KBC), an integrated bank insurance group and a top financial institution in Belgium, as a strategic partner to optimize service delivery and drive superior customer engagement.

Under an initial five-year agreement, Cognizant will deliver application development, application maintenance, and testing services to KBC. Cognizant will combine its global talent base, deep local business insight, and global best practices to  help KBC achieve greater levels of operational efficiency, business agility, and governance, while realizing its business objectives and enhancing competitiveness.

As part of the deal, Cognizant will acquire ValueSource NV, a subsidiary of KBC. Its deep experience in the financial services and insurance domain will provide business continuity for KBC and about 170 ValueSource employees who will transfer to Cognizant. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.

"The agreement will offer ValueSource the necessary economies of scale required to remain competitive in the demanding ICT market, while building on the knowledge and expertise acquired over the years with the KBC platform. Leveraging Cognizant's expertise, experience and consulting-led approach will give us the flexibility required to deal with both current and future ICT maintenance and development needs," said Rudi Peeters, Senior General Manager and Chief Information Officer of the KBC group. "This engagement is crucial to delivering the high levels of accountability, responsiveness, flexibility and innovation that our internal and external customers expect of us. With Cognizant's robust understanding of our business objectives, the financial services industry, and emerging social and mobile technology architectures, we are confident that all parties concerned will benefit from this agreement."

"We are pleased to partner with KBC and look forward to welcoming the employees of ValueSource to Cognizant," said Santosh Thomas, Senior Vice-President and Head of Continental Europe and Asia-Pacific for Cognizant. "Besides ensuring continuing productivity and operational improvements using our best-in-class application development and maintenance frameworks, Cognizant will help KBC unlock incremental efficiencies from its critical business systems and leverage those savings to fund strategic initiatives and drive future growth. We look forward to helping transform the way KBC operates and create a reliable and flexible system that can grow with the organization and easily adapt to a changing market."

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