Collaboration among credit unions, tapping into data: Introducing CUPID

Credit unions are known for being collaborative in nature, be that through interactions with members, industry peers, and even competitors. If you are in a management position at a credit union, you may have turned to others in the industry to share ideas, insights, or practices, and seek inspiration on what your credit union can be doing to continuously improve.

Looking for answers outside the walls of your business, while beneficial, is not without challenges:

• it can be time-consuming
• information can be unreliable, or not accompanied by important context
• some of the most useful data is either not available cross-provincially, or at all
• data aggregation is usually done on a static basis, and with a significant time delay

In conversations with industry leaders, MNP identified an opportunity to support credit unions as you look to improve performance and analyze data. The Credit Union Peer Information Dashboard (CUPID) will enable you to improve your credit union’s performance through critical analysis of data benchmarked against others in your sector. CUPID was developed with your challenges in mind; it infuses more confidence and peace of mind into data, informing your decision-making process.

What is CUPID?

CUPID is a dashboard that allows your credit union to meaningfully benchmark its performance compared to:

• other credit unions with similar attributes (peer groups)
• your own historical data (trends)
• the market or other relevant industry players

Working closely with executive leaders to inform your needs, this dashboard is being piloted by select credit unions in Canada who participated in various working group sessions with MNP in June and October. The volume of data available will continuously grow as we engage with system entities and as more credit unions participate.

With CUPID, you get timely information on key metrics and trends that are vital to managing your business and making more informed decisions. The dashboard, available through MNP’s secure portal, is designed to be intuitive. It gets updated monthly, quarterly, or annually, depending on the metric — to ensure you are reviewing the most accurate data available, eliminating manual aggregation by your teams. Insights can be aggregated or disaggregated, allowing for maximum value in comparators.

The data available in CUPID yields key metrics that help you measure your performance in several areas, including:

• profitability;
• productivity;
• capital, liquidity, and credit quality;
• growth;
• risk and compliance;
• HR and technology performance;
• Optimize your credit union’s use of data

Optimize your credit union’s use of data

Data is only valuable when it’s analyzed in context. Your credit union may be able to view its current data, and even some historical data, with relative ease. However, without knowing how you perform next to your peers, industry standards, and other industry participants, that data may not impart true value when making decisions and driving efficiency.

As a decision maker at a credit union, you must ask big-picture questions about performance and direction. Is our compensation structure enough to attract the best talent? Is there something unique in our business that is leading to lower margins, or are competitors experiencing the same thing? Are we growing at the rate we should be? How does this align with our current strategy and vision?

The best and most useful answers will not be derived by looking at your data in isolation or by reviewing a single KPI, but rather in analyzing multiple benchmarks side by side, and looking at trend data, all with the benefit of context. CUPID was designed to help you find the best answers to a myriad of performance-related questions.

For example, CUPID lets you know where you are leading or lagging within your benchmark peer group, thus helping you allocate resources where they are needed, increase efficiency, and reduce waste. One of CUPID’s main purposes is to help credit unions reduce inefficiencies in data gathering, while making informed decisions.

The benefits of CUPID are not limited to a single department — all decision makers at your credit union can benefit from the dashboard views.

Different value for different roles

Chief Executive Officer

• To provide additional context to our performance
• To determine alignment with strategic objectives
• To action operational tactics to pursue opportunities highlighted via the data
• To better manage priorities and implement operational changes

Chief Operating Officer

• To benchmark growth relative to peers and other industry participants
• To highlight opportunities to operate more efficiently
• To create real insight into the business and to operationalize opportunities that are highlighted by data

Chief Financial Officer

• To compare key financial metrics relative to our peers
• To determine the impact of operational changes on our financial metrics
• To highlight opportunities where financial challenges could be offset with opposing metrics

Chief Information Officer

• To benchmark our technology department (people) and investment in technology against peers and other industry participants

Chief People Officer

• To compare our compensation, rewards, attrition and team composition to our peers and other industry or geographical players

Board Member

• To identify our performance relative to our peers and if not aligned with our strategic objectives allows for more informed discussions with management

Getting started

The MNP Credit Union team has engaged with multiple credit union executives, gathering feedback to ensure the dashboard creates value for stakeholders. From October to December 2022, we will continue to work with pilot credit unions to refine metrics and how data is ingested. We are excited for a January 2023 rollout, where new participants would be accepted.

For participants, commencing in January, your team would access the benchmarking tool through the MNP client portal, and where possible gather data directly from necessary internal systems, and train your users on the functions and features available.

Contact us

For more information on CUPID or how your credit union can benefit, please contact:

Annette Bester CPA, CA, CIA, ICD.D
National Credit Union Leader
306.664.8327
[email protected]

Colin Wenngatz, MBA
Data & Analytics Leader
403.536.5578
[email protected]