BURLINGTON, MA, January 07, 2004—Cognos (NASDAQ: COGN; TSX: CSN), the world leader in enterprise business intelligence (EBI) and corporate performance management, today announced that ING DIRECT has selected Cognos EBI Series to power executive dashboards that will be used to monitor and analyze company performance. ING DIRECT offers simple financial products, including the FDIC-insured Orange Savings Account with the nation's highest yield with no fees and minimums, direct to consumers over the telephone and online. ING DIRECT is part of ING, one of the world's largest financial organizations, with more than $700 billion in assets.

By offering its savings and loan products over the telephone and online instead of through traditional bank branches, ING DIRECT keeps its overhead low and passes its cost savings on to customers in the form of competitive rates. ING DIRECT will use Cognos' powerful reporting and analysis solution to help identify further cost saving opportunities and to gain in-depth visibility into the key performance metrics. Management at ING DIRECT will use Cognos' dashboard solution to draw data from a number of sources, including an Oracle data warehouse, to uncover the significant trends and relationships in business performance.

"Using Cognos business intelligence will greatly increase our ability to recognize and react to trends in sales and marketing and help us to identify opportunities that will enable us to better serve our customers," said Arline Loh, vice president of management information systems, ING DIRECT. "With complex customer data, marketing, and financial information represented in a simple visual format, ING DIRECT will be able to easily correlate information."

"With Cognos, ING DIRECT will be able to measure the effectiveness of marketing campaigns, track market and risk exposure, and better understand its new and existing customer base through immediate and secure accessibility via a Web-based dashboard," said Leo Tucker, director of banking solutions, Cognos. "Cognos provides an essential solution for financial services companies worldwide, ensuring that banks managers and executives can quickly identify the factors that affect business and take action to protect the bottom line and ensure customers receive the highest possible service levels."

About ING DIRECT:
Headquartered in Wilmington, DE, ING DIRECT is the operating name of ING Bank fsb (Member FDIC), a federally chartered savings bank, and part of ING (NYSE: ING); one of the world's largest financial institutions with more than $700 billion in assets. ING has been operating in the U.S. for over 100 years, with more than 11,000 employees working for ING companies. ING is ranked 17th on the Fortune Global 500 list (based on a wide range of criteria such as revenues, profits, earnings per share and return to investors) and is 10th on the Forbes International 500 list (based on revenue). ING DIRECT USA has over 1.5 million customers and more than $18 billion in assets, making it one of the top ten largest thrifts in the U.S. ING DIRECT USA is one of eight direct banks operated globally by ING; the other locations are Canada, Germany (where ING DIRECT is known as DiBa), Australia, France, Spain, the United Kingdom and Italy, with a total worldwide customer base of more than eight million (including U.S. customers). For product information or to open an account, visit ingdirect.com or call 1-800-ING-DIRECT.

Style note to Editors: ING DIRECT is always capitalized and never referred to as ING.