Trading Update

GB Group PLC
08 March 2004


                                                                    8 March 2004

                                    GB GROUP
                         ('GB Group' or 'the Company')

                                 TRADING UPDATE
            WITH RESPECT TO THE FINANCIAL YEAR ENDING 31 MARCH 2004

BT Agreement and URU Service
In November 2003, the Company announced that it had entered into a Joint
Collaboration Agreement with BT to formulate a strategy to exploit the rapidly
growing identity fraud and credit fraud prevention markets. The aim of the
agreement is to use the core strengths of both organisations to develop new
products and services capable of preventing and detecting identity fraud and
credit fraud.

The first service, URU, launched in January 2004, combines the Company's data
sources and technology with BT's web service infrastructure to provide
organisations with an effective on line anti fraud service, delivered in seconds
over secure Web Services. Currently there are a number of URU trials underway
with major organisations and the Company has achieved its first evaluation sale
of URU. Although the market for URU is new and will take time to develop, we
believe that it offers good long term opportunities for the Company.

Accordingly the resource being committed by the Company to the development of
URU has been increased significantly in the areas of sales and marketing,
technical development and investment in new data sources. For example, in
February 2004 the Company entered into an agreement with CallCredit, one of the
three UK Credit Reference Agencies, under which Credit Referencing Services
provided by CallCredit will form part of the URU service thereby creating a
combined identity fraud and credit referencing service. The investment in URU
will cost the Company approximately £300,000 more than originally estimated this
year, and will continue into the next financial year. This investment
expenditure will be reflected in the Company's profit and loss account. The
Company believes that the potential of this market justifies the initial
investment in these services.

Settlement of Contract Dispute
In its Interim Statement, the Company indicated that it was undertaking a legal
process to resolve a problematic long term contract originally entered into in
June 2001. This was settled in late February 2004 with the net cost to the
Company (essentially its legal costs) amounting to approximately £100,000.

Existing Businesses
GB's existing DataIntegrity and DataSolutions businesses are generating sales
marginally lower than the Company's original expectations but around 6% ahead of
the previous year. The cost of the investment in sales and marketing and
infrastructure to achieve growth in these businesses is turning out as expected,
but gross margins on sales for the year to date are lower by around 2% due to
the greater overall competitiveness in its markets, and in particular in
relation to the resale of third party software through its DataSolutions
business. Accordingly, if this situation continues through the high sales volume
month of March, the contribution to operating profit from these businesses would
be around £300,000 less than the Company's original expectation.

Turnover and Profit for the Current Financial Year
The overall effect of the above is that the Company expects that its turnover
will be marginally lower than market expectations but ahead of last year. Also,
the Company's operating profit could be approximately £700,000 lower than the
market expectations of £1.1 million, which does not currently reflect the
investment in new business development and other matters described above. The
Group has remained cash generative over the year to date, and at 29 February
2004 group cash balances were £6.6 million compared to £6.4 million at the end
of February 2003, after taking account of the dividend payment of £400,000 in
August 2003.

The Company expects to announce its preliminary figures for this financial year
towards the end of May.
                                    - Ends -

For further information, please contact:

GB Group plc
Richard Law, Chief Executive                                        01244 657333

Weber Shandwick Square Mile                                        020 7067 0700
Richard Hews
Rachel Taylor

Website                                                             www.gb.co.uk







                      This information is provided by RNS
            The company news service from the London Stock Exchange

EN
TSTBUGDXUGGGGSI