Confluence Solution to Eliminate Manual XBRL Preparation,
Assure Data Accuracy

Confluence Announces Plans to Further Extend Fund Administration Platform

Pittsburgh, PA – September 25, 2006: Confluence, the leading provider of automated information supply chain management for the investment management industry, today announced that they are extending their automated risk/return summary capabilities to include Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL). By leveraging the Confluence fund administration platform, which automates the creation and distribution of risk/return information for more than half of U.S. mutual funds, fund administrators will be able to automate the straight through processing of XBRL data -- from the creation of the source data to the delivery of the XBRL files.

The Confluence Risk/Return Summary XBRL solution will automate the calculation of the fund performance and expense data, inclusion of Risk/Return Summary prospectus text, and the preparation and filing of the XBRL data. As a result, fund administrators can rely on the accuracy of XBRL filed data. The Risk/Return Summary in a mutual fund prospectus is designed to provide investors with information to help them make better-informed decisions about investing in mutual funds.

The Confluence platform currently solves a comprehensive line-up of fund administration data management and dissemination challenges, including performance calculation and reporting, shareholder disclosure, compliance reporting, expense management, holdings reporting, thirdparty surveys, marketing fact sheets and board books.

“Our involvement in the XBRL initiative exemplifies our unwavering commitment to enable our customers to reduce costs, eliminate risk, elevate service levels and increase scalability through business process automation,” said Kirk Botula, Confluence Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer. “We realize that the real success of XBRL lies in making sure that fund companies and their service providers can tag data accurately and automatically. The key to achieving this goal is to fully automate the process straight through – from the creation and validation of the prospectus data to the creation and delivery of the XBRL filing – thereby ensuring accuracy by delivering verified source data in XBRL.”

Enhancing the platform to enable XBRL supports Confluence’s position as the leading automated solution for fund industry information supply chain management. Designed to allow investment managers to eliminate multiple and redundant processes for collecting and confirming fund data, the Confluence platform collects data once, verifies its accuracy, and stores it in a central repository from which reliably accurate data can be repurposed for a variety of information needs. The platform automates the delivery of data in a multitude of formats, which already include XML and HTML, making the addition of XBRL a next natural extension of the platform’s delivery capabilities.

In early 2005, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) launched an initiative which allowed publicly traded companies to file financial reports on Edgar using XBRL. XBRL – which stands for Extensible Business Reporting Language – is an XML-based computer language specifically created for automating business information requirements such as the preparation, sharing, and analysis of financial reports. In August of 2005, the SEC expanded the XBRL voluntary filing program to allow mutual funds to use it for filing certain financial reports electronically. Subsequently, in June of 2006, the Investment Company Institute (ICI) announced its plan to lead an industry-wide initiative to support voluntary XBRL filings of Risk/Return prospectus summary information with the SEC.

Confluence is a participant on the ICI XBRL Working Group, which encompasses representatives of the entire fund industry – including sponsors, administrators, technology providers, information aggregators, regulators and investor advocates. Working group participants have the opportunity to contribute to and review the taxonomy, create sample XBRL documents, and generally evaluate XBRL and its uses.

The most recent ICI XBRL Working Group meeting took place on September 19 at the ICI headquarters in Washington, DC. The Working Group met to discuss the ICI XBRL project, which is intended to create, publish and maintain one or more XBRL taxonomies suitable for possible use by participants in an expanded SEC Voluntary Filing Program that would include the Risk/Return Summary of Form N-1A. Form N-1A is designed to provide investors with information to help them make decisions about investing in mutual funds. At the meeting, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, on behalf of the ICI, released the initial version of the Risk/Return Summary taxonomy for review.

Confluence is participating in a review of the Risk/Return Summary taxonomy and has identified several clients who have expressed interest in participating in a Confluence pilot project to tag prospectus data in the XBRL format.

About Confluence

Confluence, the global investment management industry’s leading provider of automated data management solutions, offers a comprehensive platform for fund administration automation, including performance measurement and holdings and financial statement reporting. These products, and Confluence’s reporting services, enable investment management firms to reduce costs and eliminate risk through automation and consolidation of critical business processes. Confluence products automate every step of the process - collection, creation, confirmation and delivery - for investment product data. Over 60 percent of U.S. mutual funds rely on Confluence to solve a wide range of problems from performance measurement to customized reporting for mutual funds, variable products, alternative investments and other instruments.

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