Grand Rapids, MI (April 27, 2022)
NACUSO presented variations of the prestigious CUSO of the Year Award to four CUSOs at their 2022 annual conference. The award presentations took place on Day 3 of the conference: Wednesday April 27 in Orlando, FL at Disney’s Yacht & Beach Club Resorts Convention Center.
The CUSO Awards have evolved over the years as they date back to 1998, but the core purpose of the awards remains; to recognize CUSO’s with stories of great accomplishments and innovation that push for advancements within the industry.
CUSOs nominated for the awards are then evaluated by NACUSO’s award committee which is no easy feat. The awards committee conducted interviews with each nominee and ultimately chose four CUSOs to be awarded for their cooperative efforts.
For 2022, the legacy CUSO of the Year Award was separated to honor two different CUSO models; one of which is a Contemporary CUSO Model and the other a Traditional CUSO Model. The additional awards for 2022 were for NEW CUSO of the Year as well as the CUSO of the Year – Distinguished Service Award that was introduced in 2021. See below for the Award Winning CUSOs of 2022:
- CUSO of the Year – Contemporary CUSO Model: LenderClose
- LenderClose has taken a very contemporary approach to raising capital, leveraging technology and managing their CUSO while having a significant and growing impact in helping credit unions serve their members’ mortgage needs. Focusing on and helping their client base led to automating the mortgage origination process so the system moves through the workflow automatically, and only notifies the loan officer if there is an issue or an exception! We also thought their Board Governance was impressive with the experienced and insightful leaders they have on their Board, challenging and encouraging Omar Jordan and the LenderClose team.
- CUSO of the Year – Traditional CUSO Model: Prodigy
- Prodigy’s story is inspiring, especially when you consider its humble beginnings. In the 1990’s an old core was going out of business and users had very limited options, so 9 small credit unions (each under $50 million in assets) decided to buy the source code out of the bankruptcy court and formed CU Data Processing. They hired some programming staff and ran their own core system so they could influence their own destiny. Prodigy has reinvented themselves by re-writing their core system, and again by adopting a fully cloud based model. Today they have 24 credit unions owners and 41 credit unions who use their core system, all of whom volunteered to an increase in pricing to support increased staffing at Prodigy, since Prodigy was saving each CU so much through automation. A wonderful example of collaboration and providing consistent value to their credit union partners
- NEW CUSO of the Year Award: Zest AI
- Zest AI has leveraged technology to help credit unions better serve their members by utilizing over 300 elements of non-traditional criteria when determining credit worthiness. Zest AI helps credit unions get more members while helping them approve 25% to 30% more members for loans. Each model is unique to each credit union and is essentially that CU’s model, so it helps them to be more efficient in their lending while helping to serve more members. Zest AI really impressed us with how they work so collaboratively with each of their 30 current credit union clients. In the last three years, Zest AI has delivered 121 models, helping to decision $5 billion in loans to 5 million members and delivering $1 billion in improved earnings from reduced credit losses!
- Distinguished Service Award: Member Driven Technologies
- This special award recognizes CUSOs who have provided substantial value and help to credit unions and their members over a long period of time. We believe that Member Driven Technologies falls into this unique group of industry leaders.Member Driven Technologies accomplishments are significant, including serving credit unions for nearly two decades and growing from the 7 founding credit unions to 120 credit unions, serving 2 million members with $20 billion in assets, all done by referrals from existing credit union owner/clients is amazing! We loved the collaboration MDT uses with their CEO Forum to help set priorities, and how they share the benefits of economies of scale with all MDT credit union clients is truly living the People Helping People vision of the credit union movement
Congratulations to all four of our award winners for 2022, and a sincere thank you for the continued forward movement of CUSOs and Credit Union services.
