Cowan Insurance Group and Open Text Develop First Insurance e-Community

Cowan Insurance Group Joins Forces with Open Text and AOL Canada Inc. to provide an e-business solution bridging consumers to insurance suppliers

Waterloo, ON - 2000-08-17 - Cowan Insurance Group, Canada s largest privately owned multi-line insurance brokerage group, and Open Text Corporation (Nasdaq: OTEX, TSE: OTC), a worldwide leader of collaborative commerce software for e-business, announced today they have strategically partnered to create a Web-based insurance broker application, the cowaninsure.com Insurance Centre. The site is operated by Cowan Dalton Inc., the wholly owned subsidiary of Cowan Insurance Group.

As a result of Cowan's existing relationship with AOL Canada Inc., AOL Canada members will be the first Canadian online consumers to benefit from being able to compare products and prices from multiple insurers in one convenient online area, located on AOL Canada's Personal Finance Channel at Keyword: Insurance.

Powered by Livelink®, the cowaninsure.com Insurance Centre is an insurance e-community that connects insurance purchasers to Canadian insurance companies, providing business to consumer (b2c) and business-to-business (b2b) transaction capabilities.

By responding to consumer demand in the increasingly competitive insurance marketplace, Cowan took this opportunity to capitalize on sales opportunities and improve customer service by leveraging its information exchange capability and operational processes. It required a technology infrastructure that would streamline business operations, attract more customers and improve interaction between both customers and insurance company suppliers, while simultaneously driving down the cost of the transaction.

"We decided to be proactive by employing the Web to reinforce our position as the dominant broker in our target markets. We will utilize this leading edge Web technology to improve customer service and create business advantage," said Scot Dalton, President, Cowan Dalton Inc. "This is the first time in Canadian history that an independent broker has been able to issue insurance interactively for multiple products with multiple insurers, using a single system. This e-business solution accomplishes what the insurance industry has been trying to do for the past twenty years-allowing our customers to compare prices and products at their convenience and making this online area an actual point-of-sale, supported by a professional call center staffed by independent brokers."

Once AOL Canada members are in the cowaninsure.com Insurance Centre, the Open Text e-Business Solutions architecture acts as a platform for electronic transactions by capturing the prospective customers' personal details for complete personal insurance needs and sharing its information with the insurers using collaborative XML-based business-to-business document transfer and transactional workflow capabilities. The insurance companies then use this information to seamlessly provide prospective customers with accurate and binding quotations in real time using an automated Open Text Virtual Underwriter engine.

"By integrating multi-line, multi-product expertise into a single expert source, this e-business solution has changed the way that Cowan Dalton and its partners do business," said Andrew Pery, Vice President, Marketing, Open Text. "This Livelink-based application allows the cowaninsure.com Insurance Center site to offer a combination of business collaboration with e-commerce, laying a foundation for Cowan Dalton to further develop an expanded e-community of suppliers, insurance carriers, value-added service and information providers."

"As more and more Canadians use online resources to make household purchasing decisions, we're pleased that AOL Canada members are the first with access to the cowaninsure.com Insurance Centre. "This initiative is yet another example of how AOL Canada Inc.'s alliances with Canadian companies such as Cowan Insurance brings added value and convenience to our members," said Stephen Bartkiw, CEO, AOL Canada Inc. "This new offering from Cowan enables AOL Canada members to obtain comparative insurance quotations, select an insurer and purchase their policy, at their convenience, through a single point of access. Furthermore, with this unique system being the first of its kind in Canada, our members have leading-edge, convenient and secure access to the kinds of services they want."

About Virtual Underwriter

Virtual Underwriter uses a rules processing engine to automate the business rules used in the insurance underwriting process and applies them to data collected from the insurance purchaser. It uses customer data to derive the information required for the underwriting process and then ensures that all of the risk factors are correctly applied in the calculation of the insurance rate. Virtual Underwriter is an on-line value added service available to the insurance e-community. It creates the capability for producing accurate real-time price quotes on demand. It reduces operational costs by decreasing the time taken to underwrite the policy, improving underwriting consistency and delivering the capability to streamline the purchasing process for brokers and consumers.

About Livelink

Livelink is a highly scaleable e-business application. Its richly-featured enterprise services include virtual team collaboration, business process automation, enterprise group scheduling and information retrieval services, all tightly integrated into a solution that is easily customized and extended. Livelink is essential to the effective management and development of communities of interest that span organizations and industries. For everything from the creation of complex e-community relationships to the automation of e-business processes, Livelink delivers true dynamic collaboration between individuals, organizations, and large trading communities. Livelink servers are fully Web-based and open-architected to ensure rapid deployment and easy access to its full functionality through a standard Web browser.

About Cowan Insurance Group

The Cowan Insurance Group is a wholly owned subsidiary of Princeton Holdings Limited. It consists of Cowan Dalton Inc., a leading national property/casualty insurance brokerage specializing in corporate and personal insurance management; The Frank Cowan Company Limited, Canada s leading provider of municipal, hospital and other public entity insurance programs administered by independent insurance brokers, and; Cowan Wright Limited, a prominent provider of employee benefits, actuarial consulting, pension administration and human resource consulting across Canada.

About AOL Canada Inc.

AOL Canada Inc., is a strategic alliance between America Online, Inc., the world's leader in interactive services and Royal Bank, Canada's premier global financial services group. AOL Canada Inc. operates two interactive online services tailored to the Canadian marketplace, AOL Canada and CompuServe, as well as several leading Internet brands including AOL.CA, AOL Canada Search and AOL Instant Messenger. AOL Canada works with its more than 80 content and e-commerce partners to offer Canadian consumers and families value, ease-of-use and convenience through state-of-the-art features. CompuServe in Canada is targeted at the small business and professional customer and provides access to a truly worldwide community where they can network with others in their industry or share similar interests through a variety of forums.

Trademark

Copyright © 2000 by Open Text Corporation. Livelink, 'Effective Solutions. Driven By Vision. Powered By Innovation.', HyperInnovation, b2bScene.com, and Open Text are trademarks or registered trademarks of Open Text Corporation., Inc. This list is not exhaustive. Other product and company names herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.

Release Disclaimer

This news release may contain forward-looking statements relating to the deployment of Livelink and myLivelink by customers, and future performance of Open Text Corporation. Forward-looking statements are subject to certain risks and uncertainties, and actual results may differ materially. These risks and uncertainties include, among others, risks involved in the completion and integration of acquisitions, the possibility of technical, logistical or planning issues in connection with deployments, the continuous commitment of the Company s customers and other risks detailed from time to time in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), including the final prospectus for the Company s initial public offering of common stock in January 1996, Form 10-K for the years ended June 30, 1998, and June 30, 1999, and Form 10-Q for the quarters ended September 30, 1999, December 31, 1999 and March 31, 2000. Forward-looking statements are based on management s beliefs and opinions at the time the statements are made, and the Company does not undertake any obligations to update forward-looking statements should circumstances or management s beliefs or opinions change.

For more information, please contact

Scot Dalton
President
Cowan Dalton Inc.
519-578-9001 x237
sdalton@cowaninsure.com

Joan Simkins
Director Corporate Communications
AOL Canada Inc.
416-216-5419
jmsimkins@aol.com

Greg Secord
Open Text Corporation
+1-519-888-7111 ext.2408
gsecord@opentext.com