By Ray Birch
PITTSBURGH—Credit unions have long been “data rich but insight poor,” according to one company that has introduced a new free tool that aims to change that — and its most intriguing promise may be the ability to surface early warning signs of risk before they fully show up in a credit union’s bottom line.
BlastPoint, a data and analytics firm that works closely with credit unions, has launched CU Scorecard, a publicly available benchmarking platform built entirely on NCUA Call Report data. The tool does not just compare credit unions to peers — it analyzes how key metrics move together, flagging patterns that can signal emerging risk or success well ahead of time.
“We’re not just serving up data,” said Tomer Borenstein, co-founder and chief technology officer at BlastPoint. “We look at how metrics interact in ways that can reveal early warning signals — or early success signals — before they become obvious in the numbers.”
CU Scorecard was not originally designed as a public product.
Borenstein said BlastPoint first built it as an internal tool to better understand the credit union market and its own partners. But as the company began sharing insights with individual credit unions, leaders reacted with surprise — and enthusiasm.
“Almost every credit union executive I’ve worked with wants to know: ‘How am I doing compared to my peers?’” Borenstein said. “But getting that answer typically meant weeks of analysis, a dedicated analyst, or an expensive subscription tool.”
Credit unions, he said, are sitting on “mountains of data,” yet often struggle to translate it into clear strategic insight — especially for board conversations.
“That’s where the idea came from,” Borenstein said. “Data for the sake of data doesn’t do anything. It has to answer a ‘why.’”
BlastPoint decided to make the tool free in part as a way to “give back” to an industry that has been good to the company — but also because early feedback suggested it could reshape how leaders think about performance.
The Most Distinctive Feature: ‘Signatures’ Of Risk And Performance
What sets CU Scorecard apart from many benchmarking tools, Borenstein said, is what BlastPoint calls “signature analysis.”
Rather than treating each metric separately, the system looks for patterns — combinations of trends that tend to travel together across the industry.
One example Borenstein highlighted involves loan growth.
“A credit union might look at strong loan growth and feel great about it,” he said. “But if, at the same time, delinquencies and charge-offs are also creeping up, that can be an early signal that the growth is riskier than in the past.”
The tool surfaces these patterns explicitly and even shows how a credit union ranks relative to peers exhibiting the same behavior.
“You might see that you have this pattern, but that 142 of 161 peers in your tier are worse — which gives very different context than just seeing the raw numbers,” Borenstein said.
Credit unions can decide whether that risk is acceptable — but the key is visibility, Borenstein said.
“You can’t change what you don’t measure,” he added.
What CUs Actually See On The Platform
When a user searches for a specific credit union, CU Scorecard generates a customized profile that includes:
- A scorecard view highlighting key strengths and concerns
- A table of core financial metrics with quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year trends
- Comparisons to tier averages, state averages, and national averages
- Clear indicators of whether the institution sits in the top or bottom quartile on major measures
Beyond individual scorecards, the platform also offers:
Leaderboards:
Users can rank credit unions by performance across nearly any metric — nationally, by state, or within an asset tier. Leaders can create custom lists for member growth, ROA, net interest margin, efficiency, and more.
Industry analysis:
Perhaps most “board-ready,” according to Borenstein, is a national and state-level analysis section that synthesizes trends with charts, commentary, and context — closer to “Wall Street data journalism” than raw spreadsheets.
“This is the kind of thing CEOs and boards actually want to see,” he said.
Why This Matters Now
Credit unions are operating in a more complex environment than ever — squeezed by rising funding costs, margin pressure, regulatory scrutiny, and uneven loan demand across markets. Borenstein argues that transparent, standardized benchmarking is becoming less of a luxury and more of a strategic necessity.
“Leaders are asking for faster, simpler ways to interpret Call Report data and spot potential risks without adding headcount or paying $50,000 for analytics,” he said.
CU Scorecard, he added, was designed specifically for executive use — not for analysts buried in spreadsheets.
Borenstein emphasized the tool is free, there is no subscription, no login requirement, and no paywall. He added that BlastPoint hopes broader use of the tool will position the company as a thought leader and deepen relationships with credit unions — but Borenstein stressed that CU Scorecard is not meant to replace paid analytics platforms.
“We didn’t build this as a revenue product,” he said. “We built it because our customers found it incredibly useful, and we believed the whole industry could benefit.”
How To Access It
Credit union leaders — or anyone interested in the sector — can explore the tool at:
https://cuscorecard.blastpoint.com/
A short user guide is available here:
https://cuscorecard.blastpoint.com/guide