After all, isn’t that the point?

Year 2000 saw further strengthening of Southwest Bank of Texas’ reputation and leadership in financial and banking technology applications.

From the expansion of our own e-delivery of banking services (NetST@R^SM and bank@home). To automated internal business processes and practices. To advancing our role as technoloy advisors and e-enablers for many of our commercial customers.

Our strategy of software development and application consultation is serving our bank and commercial customers well.

In fact, not only are customers relying on us for e-solutions development, we also execute, host and fulfill the financial services we help develop. With security and privacy features that are second to none.

In this way, we’ve created a unique interface between the Internet-based financial or sales utility on our customers’ Web site—and us.

Profitable. For our customers. And for us.

But that’s just part of the story.

By enlisting our considerable technical expertise and muscle to help customers get the most from their e-solutions investment, our customers invite us into a level of understanding of their businesses that few banks achieve.

Between our own e-banking services and services we provide for customers, Southwest Bank of Texas is hosting, managing and transacting an average of more than 10 million hits per month.

And we anticipate significant growth to come.

In volume. In quality. And in the smiles that appear with technology that works.

1 TAX AUTHORITY Harris County’s Tax Office serves the third-most populous county in the nation. When Tax Assessor-Collector Paul Bettencourt wanted county taxpayers to “get online instead of in line,” he turned to Southwest Bank of Texas as a key technology outsource to help execute the ambitious Internet presentation and collection initiative. Working closely with Harris County Financial Services, Southwest Bank of Texas turn-keyed the credit card processing of the Tax Office online property payment system. Southwest Bank of Texas directly processed over 5,000 online payments totaling $7.6 million dollars; payments cleared and settled in a compressed time frame, providing a seamless real-time payment/reporting cycle to the county tax office ... and a convenient, easy-to-use payment option for all county citizens.

2 SWITCHED-ON SAVINGS Additional utility costs due to billing errors in a business’ utility bills may run as high as three percent. But for many businesses, the expense of periodic audits exceed the excess utility costs. One business customer asked if there was anything we could do. Southwest Bank of Texas met the challenge with a unique e-commerce solution. A solution that required us to take the lead in vendor negotiation, implementation, coordination and programming. This nontraditional role as solutions provider also involves our ongoing participation as an application service provider. We collect multivendor bills in differing formats and translate those bills into a single, standard form that can be imported into clients’ native accounting environments. Now, utility bill audits are not only possible, they’re simplified. Staff resources are minimized. And management reports are allowing our customer to optimize utility use to save even more in basic operations costs. Good news for the company. And good news for Southwest Bank of Texas: Solving one company’s problem now allows us to leverage this unique technology solution for other bank customers.

3 QUALITY LOCKED-IN While Remittance Banking has been available to businesses since 1951, we’ve taken these common “Lockbox” services to uncommon levels of quality, security and value through our innovative application of technology. Southwest Bank of Texas now processes an average of more than 600,000 items per month through our Remittance Banking Service. This escalating volume with an unheard of three-year average accuracy rate of 99 percent is great news for us—and great news for our customers. Through early morning, e-delivery of remittance transactions—including check and documentation images—customers enjoy the benefits of accelerated cash flow plus the security of automated remittance processing. It’s a combination of technology and customer-focused innovation that continues to set Southwest Bank of Texas apart.

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