CU*Answers, Inc., a Grand Rapids, Michigan-based cooperative CUSO recently sent a team of executives and technical leaders to the IBM Executive Briefing Center in Rochester, Minnesota for a strategic planning session with members of IBM’s POWER® systems development lab.  The day-long agenda, which was developed collaboratively by both teams, focused on leveraging both existing and emerging IBM technologies within the CUSO’s CU*BASE^® core data processing suite utilized by more than 200 credit unions across the US.

CU*Answers Chief Information Officer Jody Karnes noted, “IBM has been a great partner of our CUSO for more than two decades.  Although this was not our first collaborative planning meeting with the IBM Rochester team, I believe it was the best one.  Both sides shared their vision on how technology would evolve in the financial services sector in the coming decade, which not only validated our tactical project execution, but also helped frame the roadmap for an ongoing investment in IBM technology as the strategic backbone of our solutions. We left the session very energized.”

“We embrace the fact that IBM’s POWER^® technology, in particular its IBM i operating system, is the most widely deployed platform in the banking world,” says Karnes.  “We know we are in the right place, with the right partner and the best architecture.  It’s exciting that the foundation we continue to build each day will serve hundreds of our owning credit unions and millions of their members for decades.”