- Cognizant to Provide Broad Range of
Application Services Under Multiyear Agreement
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."
About KBC
KBC is an integrated multi-channel bank insurance group,
catering mainly for retail, SME and local midcap clients. It
concentrates on its home markets of Belgium and certain countries in Central and
Eastern Europe (Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bulgaria and Hungary). Elsewhere around the globe, the
group has established a presence in selected countries and regions.
KBC provides banking, insurance and asset management products and
services via its integrated distribution channel consisting of bank
branches, insurance agents and brokers and the Internet. KBC's
headquarters are located in Brussels (Belgium), the heart of Europe. The group employs more than 37,000
people. KBC is listed on NYSE Euronext Brussels (ticker symbol
KBC). For more information, please visit www.kbc.com.
About Cognizant
Cognizant (NASDAQ: CTSH) is a leading provider of information
technology, consulting, and business process outsourcing services,
dedicated to helping the world's leading companies build stronger
businesses. Headquartered in Teaneck, New
Jersey (U.S.), Cognizant combines a passion for client
satisfaction, technology innovation, deep industry and business
process expertise, and a global, collaborative workforce that
embodies the future of work. With over 50 delivery centers
worldwide and approximately 164,300 employees as of June 30, 2013, Cognizant is a member of the
NASDAQ-100, the S&P 500, the Forbes Global 2000, and the
Fortune 500 and is ranked among the top performing and fastest
growing companies in the world. Visit us online at
www.cognizant.com or follow us on Twitter: Cognizant.
Forward-Looking Statements
This press release includes statements which may constitute
forward-looking statements made pursuant to the safe harbor
provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995,
the accuracy of which are necessarily subject to risks,
uncertainties, and assumptions as to future events that may not
prove to be accurate. Factors that could cause actual results to
differ materially from those expressed or implied include general
economic conditions and the factors discussed in our most recent
Form 10-K and other filings with the Securities and Exchange
Commission. Cognizant undertakes no obligation to update or revise
any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new
information, future events, or otherwise.