By Ray Birch
TAMPA—Many more credit unions will get a better understanding in May of just what is the Credit Union Data Exchange (CUDX), according to Trellance, which has provided an update on the new data sharing tool being designed to help credit unions better compete with the plethora of other financial providers.
As CUToday.info reported, CUDX is being built by the Filene Research Institute and Trellance to help CUs break down walls and collaborate nationally on what is designed to be much more than a data warehouse and instead could someday even rival the resources of much larger providers.
“We are in the design phase, and we have an interactive, clickable mock up,” said Adam Wright, managing director of operations for CUDX. “We have received a lot of input from our three councils on the data model.”
As Wright noted, Trellance walked some people through its initial CUDX model during America’s Credit Unions’ Governmental Affairs Conference in early March.
“We are in the process of populating that (model) with real credit union data in order to have a live demo,” Wright explained. “We hope to have a viable product by the time we meet that our Edge meeting in May in Nashville. We should actually have at least 10 or 15 credit unions’ worth of data in it at that time. People will begin to see just what the power of CUDX can be.”
Conference Scheduled
In addition, Trellance is co-hosting the inaugural EDGE conference May 6-7 in Nashville, along with Filene, CUDX and others. Wright noted EDGE is not a Trellance product. “It is a cooperative effort among credit unions that Trellance and Filene are investing in and enabling,” he said.
Wright said he is hopeful credit unions interested in the initiative currently understand CUDX is coming together quickly.
“It is becoming real. There is data flowing into it. And, there are use cases under development that are being driven by the opinions, needs and wants of the participants themselves,” he said. “I also hope credit unions will take away that CUDX is going to allow them to not only see themselves, but see themselves compared to the other credit unions participating in CUDX. So, the ability to do benchmarking, to see things about members that might be different than their own, members living in different geographic areas or using products that maybe they don't offer, with product features they don't currently offer.
“They can just get some comparisons and see the power of this data,” continued Wright. “We also want people to know CUDX is really marching forward. It's not a bunch of vaporware. It's not a product suite that's being sold to them from outside. It's something that they own and can participate in and can shape their direction.”
Adam Wright
‘A Rich, Diverse Data Set’
Trellance CEO Tom Davis told CUToday.info in a previous report that CUDX is going to help CUs compete with much larger providers of financial services.
Wright agreed with Davis’ assessment.
“It's going to give credit unions access to a rich, diverse large data set based on millions of members across the country rather than only being able to see their own members, or maybe some third-party data they may have purchased,” Wright said. “Maybe the very largest credit unions, for example, Navy Federal—with 13 million members and with a nationwide footprint and a good data science team—can begin to do some of the things that a larger bank can, with respect to knowing their members.”
The vast majority of credit unions, even those of more than $1 billion in assets, will not have a large, diverse data set data that represents more than just their own members or their own products, Wright reminded.
“One point we've been really harping on is CUDX isn't a data warehouse,” said Wright. “Not only will you get access to this data set, but as these use cases are developed credit unions will have access to dashboards and printed models and things that are really being built on top of CUDX. Many credit unions would have difficulty developing those types of solutions for themselves.”
Governing Board and Advisory Boards
By August, 2023, CUDX had more than 30 credit unions pledged to participate, all signing letters of intent, Wright said.
“We have seated the governing board, which consists of seven founding member credit union CEOs. We have seated three advisory boards,” he said.
The advisory boards, or councils, cover three topic areas: research and innovation, governance, and data privacy, risk and compliance.
“They are focused on everything from what use cases should be developed, how are we going to deliver from a technological or an architectural standpoint, how data gets protected—not only in ways that satisfy laws and rules but also each participating credit union’s own individual member privacy agreements…,” Wright said. “The physical security of who's allowed to see (the data), and all of the things that we need to do to ensure personally identifiable information would be would not be exposed.”
Use Cases in Development
Those councils have met twice and are developing CUDX use cases.
“Coming out of the most recent council meetings. There definitely is excitement around this and a lot of momentum right now. The number of participating credit unions should start ticking up pretty quickly through mid-year,” Wright said, adding that credit unions will feel secure in the CUDX’s data privacy protection measures. “We definitely still have the goal of reaching 100 participating credit unions by the end of 2024. I think 100 is a good, solid number. It's going to give us a really diverse data set. And, as CUDX becomes real, credit unions will really see the value it offers—100 is the tip of the iceberg.”