FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

LORE Technology & Charles Schwab move forward with Portfolio Management

OAKLAND, CA, February 21, 1999 -- After a year of development LORETechnology leads Schwab team in the development of a Portfolio Management product. This product provides Schwab customers with performance reporting of unrealized gains or losses on their investments. See Schwab comments below

The crucial question everyone has about their portfolio is "How am I doing?" The answer to that question just got a little simpler with the beta launch of Schwab's first version of Portfolio Performance.

After a two-month-long pilot to 10,000 RISS customer households, this tool is debuting to all customers to help them determine the unrealized gain or loss of their investments at a single glance. Customers can also view the total cost and percentage gain/loss for stocks, mutual funds, and debt instruments.

"Previously, there was no place on schwab.com where customers could go to see how they were doing overall," said Loretta Ellison, a consultant with EB's Product Development group. "So, they would go to places like Yahoo or Microsoft Investor to find out. This is a big first step forward in allowing customers to see how their investments are performing over time."

Customers can customize their portfolio performance page as they like by rearranging columns or adding new columns for such things as the bid and ask price or the 52-week high or low.

Because the Portfolio Performance Review screens might seem complex to novice investors, EB's Product Development group decided to use pop-up windows to enhance the user experience.

"We didn't want people to get lost," said Ellison. "Also by using the pop-up windows, customers won't have to go back and forth to other screens."

Ellison credits the Schwab employees who participated in the first pilot with helping to build the final product.

"Our motto in building this product was to build and learn, build and learn," said Ellison. "Employees were great about telling us what worked and what they wanted. They provided us with an internal customer view. They were like a giant usability lab."

So what is next for Portfolio Performance? Ellison is currently working on incorporating the ideas that came out of the different pilots into a future release. Stay tuned for details.

By Grant Faulkner
1/29/99

LORETechnology, L.L.C. is a San Francisco Bay Area company providing electronic commerce consulting services to the Financial Services Industry.