Northern Financial Corporation

NEWS RELEASE TRANSMITTED BY CCN - A NEWSWIRE SERVICE OF ITG

FOR:  NORTHERN FINANCIAL CORPORATION

TSE SYMBOL:  NFC

FEBRUARY 6, 2001 - 17:00 EST

eNorthern Captures Second Place In Online Broker Survey

TORONTO, ONTARIO--Northern Financial Corporation ("Northern 
Financial") announced today that eNorthern has been ranked second 
overall in the Gomez Canada Winter survey of online brokers, 
released yesterday.  eNorthern is the online division of Northern 
Securities Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Northern Financial. 
Gomez, the Internet quality measurement firm, placed eNorthern in 
second place, moving it ahead of four of its competitors to 
capture second place among online brokers.  eNorthern pulled ahead
of such competitors as TD Waterhouse, Charles Schwab, Royal Bank 
Action Direct and Bank of Montreal Investorline. 

eNorthern was first in two of the four individual customer profile
categories.  As stated in the Gomez survey, "Emerging victorious 
in the Serious Investor and Active Trader profiles, eNorthern also
won the Cost, Relationship Services and Ease of Use categories. 
The site makes a great first impression, with a best of breed 
interactive demo. Once signed up, customers will experience a 
clean and straightforward design that is very well integrated."  
Details of the survey can be found at www.gomez.com. 

"Understandably, we are delighted with the results of the latest 
Gomez survey", stated AnneMarie Ryan, Senior Vice President of 
Online Businesses for Northern Financial.  "This ranking serves as
confirmation that eNorthern is a serious competitor to the large 
firms.  We are challenging the existing online brokers by being 
innovative and constantly seeking to enhance and improve our site 
and our service offering.  We are determined to deliver a superior
online trading service to Canadian investors." 

Chairman and CEO Vic Alboini commented,  "Northern Financial is 
the only publicly held brokerage company in Canada which offers 
both online investment banking and online trading services.   Our 
clear, focused strategy is to build a small cap-oriented, 
traditional investment bank with a strong Internet distribution 
system.  eNorthern offers what we believe to be the best financial
services portal in Canada, with access to market data, news, 
research, online trading and online public offerings." 

Gomez is the leading Internet quality measurement firm, providing 
e-commerce customer experience measurement, benchmarking, and 
customer acquisition services to help firms build successful 
e-businesses and guide consumers in transacting online. 

Northern Financial Corporation wholly owns Northern Securities, a 
full service Toronto-based investment bank which provides services
to small market capitalization companies and which provides online
trading and online public offering services at its website at 
www.enorthern.com. 

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