Applied Financial Technology Announces Record Growth

San Francisco, February, 2002 -- Applied Financial Technology (formerly Espiel, Inc.) announced today that it grew over 100% in 2001. This follows 250% growth in 2000. Overall, the company has seen nearly 500% growth in the last two years.

Michael Bykhovsky, CEO of Applied Financial Technology and a veteran of Wall Street, has spent more than 12 years developing prepayment models and mortgage analytics. He said, "The increase in business is rather remarkable considering the weak economic environment last year. Our client base has expanded to include seven of the top ten MBS dealers, five of the top ten Mortgage Banks, and three of the top five originators of mortgage loans, along with hundreds of other smaller users. We attribute this phenomenal growth to an increased awareness of the new generation of prepayment modeling that has emerged in the last few years. Prepayment modeling has evolved over the years from the antique and short-lived 12-year balloon assumption, to the now discredited statistically-fit models, to the most recent "behavior-based" models. To our knowledge, only three firms have managed to build this new generation of models, and two of them do not offer their models in the commercial market with any degree of openness. The Espiel Prepayment Model is, or can be, integrated into any software program that generates speeds or values for mortgage-related loans, servicing rights, pools or securities."

The company will offer new services later this year including Dynamic Aggregation software and Prepayment Scoring software. Both will advance the accuracy and efficiency of pricing of mortgages at every point from origination to the valuation of securities.

Applied Financial Technology, a privately held company headquartered in San Francisco, California, has been providing prepayment risk and other Fixed Income analytics to the mortgage industry since 1996.