Financial Services

  In 1998, revenues from our Information Services business passed the $1 billion mark: a fitting symbol of our leadership position in the financial services market and living testimony to our stated business philosophy of delivering enhanced value through a true understanding of our customers' businesses.

  We have helped some of the world's largest banking institutions streamline their processes, improve their productivity and get closer to their customers. For example, over the past six years, ALLTEL has migrated 18 million Bank of America customer households and 1 million businesses to a common service platform.

  Improvements in productivity and profitability will soon be available to many more of America's mortgage banking institutions, thanks to ALLTEL's partnerships with industry leaders Transamerica Real Estate Information Companies and First American Real Estate Information Services. By sharing our extensive data resources with these new partners and streamlining our mortgage servicing system, we can dramatically simplify the lending process and eliminate many of the redundancies and costs currently affecting mortgage banking firms.

   Through a new long-term strategic alliance with Ford Credit, our application development expertise will also be applied to the automotive financing industry. A world leader in its field, Ford Credit selected ALLTEL's Advanced Loan System and associated application software to spearhead the development of its state-of-the-art retail, leasing and wholesale financing systems, serving dealers and more than 8 million automotive retail customers in 36 countries.

  Looking to our own international business, the total number of countries served by ALLTEL rose to 48 in 1998, with the signing of a contract to provide software and information technology to Grupa Pekao SA, Poland's largest bank in terms of assets. Playing a central role in our clients' global operations is an integral part of ALLTEL's information services strategy, and we will continue to pursue international opportunities wherever we can create mutual value as a true business partner.