1.3 Best practice rule management 5 a loan are driven by the need to minimize risk exposure. Financial institutions also apply rules to man- age their overall exposure to risk across the set of accounts held by corporate customers (or retail cus- tomers with large loans). Internally defined rules may cover such matters as minimum prices (or maximum discounts) to protect revenue, completeness of information to support decision making (to ensure in turn risk minimization, cost reduction, or revenue generation), guidelines for rewarding customer loyalty (to minimize `churn' and thus maintain market share and reduce costs)--these are of course only a small sample. Enlightened organizations also constrain their business activities to ensure that they do not have a deleterious impact on the natural environment or the safety of employees and customers. Safety matters are governed by Occupational Health and Safety regulations (for employees) and product safety reg- ulations (for customers). A really enlightened organization may even take into account the financial well-being of customers: for example, my mother's bank recently advised her of ways of reducing the fees she pays for their services; of course, whether this was as a result of any business rule is an interesting question. 1.3 BEST PRACTICE RULE MANAGEMENT Given their importance, it is important that an organization's rules be managed in such a way as to