Insurance giant CNA selects Bowstreet to take its commercial insurance products online

[Ann Kelly <akelly@bowstreet.com>]

Insurance giant CNA selects Bowstreet to take its commercial insurance
products online

CNA will utilize Bowstreet product to speed its reach and distribution to
thousands of agents, brokers, partners, industry associations and
e-marketplaces


LYNNFIELD, MA, December 5, 2000 -- CNA (NYSE: CNA), one of the nation's
largest commercial insurers with annual revenues of $16.4 billion, has
selected the Bowstreet(tm) Business Web Factory as a platform to offer its
products online to a large number of agents, brokers and partners through
customized experiences across the web.

"We're not just getting into e-commerce, we're getting into plug-and-play
e-commerce," said Robert James, CEO of CNA's eBusiness Group. "We believe we
are staying ahead of the competition by giving customers, suppliers and
partners just what they're looking for, wherever they are. We are blending
the best of the old and new to significantly expand our market reach and
eliminate substantial programming efforts, all to benefit customers and
shareholders."

Using technology from Bowstreet (www.bowstreet.com), a leading provider of
business web automation solutions for plug-and-play e-commerce, business
people can extend CNA's "storefronts" across the Internet to thousands of
agents, brokers, partners, e-marketplaces and industry associations - highly
customized for each - simply by pointing and clicking. This approach reduces
the time, cost and burden of line-by-line programming, and enables the
company to aggregate and disaggregate its products and services in near
real-time to capitalize on market opportunities. With custom offerings and
product information, the CNA partners can increase their expertise in their
markets, sell more insurance and execute their transactions online. 

With Bowstreet, CNA can sell insurance the way its business customers want
it - in packages tailored specifically for them. A broker who sells
insurance to overseas shippers, for instance, won't have to sift through
offerings for architects. An electronic marketplace for small businesses
that wants to bundle its services with CNA's products will be able to do so
by dynamically assembling the relevant services from CNA. CNA will also be
able to offer special services - such as market-specific insurance
information or news feeds - to each of its partners. Additionally, by
embedding storefronts at locations all over the Internet, CNA will be able
to empower its agents to service their customers anytime and anywhere. 

This approach of interconnecting companies in dynamic business webs is based
on the Business Web Factory's foundation in Extensible Markup Language
(XML), a common language of e-commerce, and on Bowstreet's dynamic
change-automation technology. The combination helps eliminate the need for
CNA to hard-code a separate monolithic web site for each audience, then
separately program changes on each partner site. Using Bowstreet automation
technology, a change (introducing a new CNA product, for example) can be
propagated across thousands of web sites with a single mouse click.
 
CNA, whose business web is scheduled to go live later this year, will create
its business web from web 
services - business processes and other core competencies wrapped in XML.
"Although this technology is brand new, some of the world's most established
companies are adopting it as a core Internet infrastructure to lead their
industries into the next generation of e-business: plug-and-play
e-commerce," said Bowstreet President and CEO Bob Crowley. "CNA believes
that automating its business web gives it a significant advantage over
companies still using first-generation e-business technologies like phones,
faxes, e-mail and one-size-fits-all web sites to sell insurance."

Leverent Consulting has also been part of the CNA e-business leadership
team, creating CNA's web services architecture in order to enable the CNA
business web. 

About CNA
CNA is a leading insurance organization offering a broad range of insurance
products and insurance-related services. Since 1897, CNA has built a
foundation of financial strength, stability and commitment to customers and
business partners. CNA is a registered service mark, trade name and domain
name of CNA Financial Corporation. For more information, please visit
www.cna.com.

About Leverent
Leverent Consulting creates and builds e-business solutions for Global 2000
companies, providing end-to-end services to transform a business into a
business web. Leverent's unique e-Business Go2Market methodology coupled
with expertise in the area of web services architecture definition and
development provides clients with a significant edge. For more information
visit www.leverent.com.
 
About Bowstreet
Bowstreet provides XML infrastructure for plug-and-play e-commerce.
Bowstreet's Business Web Factory uses change-automation technology to create
business webs: fluid, interconnected collections of web services from
multiple providers that come together dynamically over the Internet.
Bowstreet's solutions enable companies to sell new products and services,
create new channels of distribution and develop new business initiatives at
a fraction of the time and cost of many of today's approaches. For more
information, visit www.bowstreet.com or call 781-586-7100.

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Bowstreet is a trademark of Bowstreet, Inc. All other company names and
product names may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective
companies or owners.

Contact:	

Ann Kelly
Bowstreet
603-559-1557
akelly@bowstreet.com

Tim Munroe 					 
Beaupre & Co. Public Relations Inc. 		
603-559-5820					
tmunroe@beaupre.com