CU*Answers, the 100% credit union-owned data processing CUSO, has introduced to its CU*BASE core processing platform the ability for credit unions to flood data values to member accounts. The Self-Directed Data Flood tool performs many of the most commonly requested flood routines. In the past, these tasks were performed strictly by CU*Answers programmers to ensure proper auditing and posting of new values as a means of protecting the credit unions. This feature marks a change in the CUSO’s stance, opening the door for data-minded credit unions to manage the process themselves—credit unions can still request for CU*Answers staff to perform floods however. To prevent accidental floods, the feature has built-in audit and exception reports, with validation to ensure only clean data is written into member files.

“Over the last decade, we’ve seen credit unions start to become experts in their data,” said CEO Randy Karnes. “The stronger their grasp of the data, the more tools and services they’ve asked for, not only for analyzing and acting on that data—which has led to Analytics Booth and the Asterisk Intelligence team—but also for managing the data. That’s where we’ve made improvements to how credit unions define and store their data and have given them the tools previously reserved to CUSO staff. It’s exciting to see credit unions really come into their own in this area, and we’re excited to continue working alongside them to develop the products and services they’ll need to achieve even greater success.