CU*Answers, the 100% credit union-owned, data processing CUSO, recently determined the sixth month statistics for alert items posted between July 1 and December 31 of 2019. In total, CU*Answers posted 171 alert items – 83 of these were posted in Q3 and 88 were posted in Q4.

Breaking these figures down month-by-month, July and August each saw 31 alerts posted, September saw 21 alerts, October saw 29 alerts, November saw 32 alerts, and December closed out the year with 27 alerts. This brought the average send rate for the second half of the year to 28.5 alerts per month (with quarterly averages being 27.7 per month in Q3, and 29.3 per month in Q4). These alert totals only account for alerts posted by CU*Answers, and do not account for any alerts posted by CU*SOUTH, CU*NorthWest, or any Xtend fraud alerts.

For both Q3 and Q4 2019, instances of scheduled maintenance and unexpected issues within the network represented the largest portion of alerts posted, with connectivity interruptions following slightly behind. These alert categories maintained a relatively consistent volume with previous years, though Q3 of 2019 saw nearly double the instances of scheduled maintenance over the previous year, while connectivity interruptions in Q4 saw a moderate decrease from 2018 to 2019. This could indicate that more instances of proactive maintenance has allowed CU*Answers to improve connectivity within the network and avoid outages. Additional alert categories for Q3 and Q4 2019 included file delays, GOLD updates, general info alerts, and a new category for rollover updates.

Alert figures for 2019 saw an overall increase from the previous year – the total number of alerts posted in Q3 2019 was 83, up from 70 alerts in Q3 2018. Meanwhile, Q4 2019 saw 88 alerts posted, up from 77 alerts posted in Q4 2018.