Highest Official: Michael A. Johnston, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Public Affairs Contact: Wendell Collins, Vice President and Publicity Manager (609) 282-3121
E-mail: wendell_collins@ml.com

Merrill Lynch Credit Corporation provides a wide variety of liability management services including home financing, personal credit, and investment and business financing. Established in 1981, MLCC is a subsidiary of Merrill Lynch & Co.

MLCC's 830 employees, known as partners, market and sell all MLCC products through a nationwide network of over 14,000 Financial Consultants at Merrill Lynch Private Client sales offices. MLCC's headquarters are in Jacksonville, Fla., with 29 district offices located throughout the United States. In addition to being a Baldrige Award winner, MLCC also won the 1996 Governor's (Florida) Sterling Award, a quality award based on the Baldrige Award criteria.

Quality and Business Performance Achievements:

• Financial results, including Return on Equity (ROE), Return on Assets (ROA), Revenue/Expenses, Delinquency Rate-Jumbo, and Write Offs - Home Equity Line of Credit (HELOC), show favorable trends and favorable comparisons to the Industry Group Average. For example, ROE increased approximately 74 percent and ROA increased approximately 36 percent from 1994 to 1996.

• Net income rose 100 percent from 1994 to 1996 and exceeds the industry group average.

• Total Loan Originations, Market Share Originations, Wholesale Volume as a Percentage of First Mortgages, and Size of Servicing Portfolio, all show favorable trends between 1994 and 1996 and show favorable comparisons to either an Industry Group Average or selected competitors. The ranking of HELOC issuers improved from number seven to number three in the industry during the period.

• Through process improvements and the application of the Quality Improvement and Control (QIC) Story , a tailored and refined story board technique, the percentage of Legal Submissions Returned Late was reduced from 20 percent in the first half of 1995 to 0 percent in the second half of 1996.

• MLCC considers partner empowerment critical to its success. Partners are encouraged to take initiative and responsibility, especially in areas such as flexibility, cooperation, rapid response and learning. Cross-and just-in-time training, cross-functional teams and flow re-engineering teams help partners achieve success.

• MLCC has identified 18 core service and support processes. Each process has defined requirements, end-of-process quality indicators and key in-process indicators. Quantitative performance standards are associated with each indicator.

• MLCC emphasizes process management and measurement systems to link every partner to company objectives, and makes heavy use of technology approaches to enable partners to meet the ever-increasing expectations of clients and the company's Financial Consultants.

• MLCC has revised its planning and management to ensure smooth hand-offs between departments and client needs resulting in significant reduction in client and Financial Consultant complaints, high levels of client and Financial Consultant satisfaction, and continuously improving productivity and profitability levels.

• The hours of training per partner improved from 66 to 74 per year from 1994 to 1996 and was nearly twice that of selected benchmarks.

• MLCC maintains a work environment and work climate that supports the well-being, satisfaction and motivation of partners. MLCC strives to be the employer of choice and offers multiple methods of improving partner satisfaction, including alternative work arrangements. Partner satisfaction with the company's recognition programs improved from 42 percent in 1994 to 70 percent in 1996. MLCC now surveys a subset of employees quarterly on the 15 drivers of partner satisfaction.

• Senior leaders set direction and seek future opportunities for the company through a systematic Business Planning Process. The Leadership System, developed through this process, is comprised of seven activities that describe what leaders are expected to do, and a set of values and principles that describe howleaders should accomplish these seven activities. This Leadership System is understood by all partners.

• The Business Planning Process provides a sound, systematic approach through which the organization engages the entire work force in the development and deployment of strategic and tactical level plans. Through this process, MLCC identifies Strategic Imperatives that lead to Critical Few Objectives (CFOs) with appropriate measures and goals. Early in the process, partners are involved by using these CFOs to define action plans to achieve the objectives. This process has been in place several years and has been through several evaluation and improvement cycles.