Two years after it began, Jeff Johnson is not completelysatisfied with the progress made by the CUFX project.

The effort to create a new technology standard for integratingcredit union-specific software, however, has marked a number ofmilestones since it was launched by members of the CUNA TechnologyCouncil.

At the $1.8 billion BCU, the Vernon Hills, Ill., credit unionwhere Johnson is senior vice president of information technology,about 9,000 of its 165,000 members are active users of a personalfinancial management solution that aggregates data from suchdisparate sources as the Symitar core processing system, PSCU cardprocessing, a mortgage sub-servicer and the MoneyDesktop PFMsolution.

Coming up soon is a second beta launch to include a set ofstandards to tie together an online account opening flow.

Other signs of progress: about 25 credit unions and 25 vendorsare committed to the CUFX effort, including four major coreprocessors – Fiserv (DNA, XP, CUBE, Acumen, among others), JackHenry & Associates (Symitar), Harland Financial Solutions(UltraData) and FIS (MISER, Mercury) – now participating invarious working groups.

Participants also have anted up $305,000 in the past year tosupport the project, and a fulltime architect manager working outof Atlanta has been hired to develop the new specificationsdesigned to help credit unions and their technology partners morequickly develop and launch new products and services.

So what's the problem?

“Quite frankly, it's not going as fast as I'd like it to,” saidJohnson, a veteran manager who also was a Credit UnionTimes' 2012 Trailblazer IT Executive of the Year. “But the reality isthat this really is a big paradigm shift for our entire industry,and to make changes like this, really, it's just going to taketime.”

Particularly encouraging to Johnson and another key leader inthe CUFX project, Heather Moshier at the $5.8 billion San DiegoCounty Credit Union, is the commitment from vendors.

“The fact we've got all four cores sitting around one room atone time is a huge victory,” said Johnson, currently vice chair ofthe CUNA Technology Council.

“That was our big question last year,” said Moshier, the councilchair and her California credit union's executive vice president ofinformation technology. “At the time the only core vendor reallycommitted was Symitar. The CUNA Technology Council really workedhard at CTO roundtable meetings and with various vendors. Nowothers are coming onboard. We also have mobile and online vendorslined up to help us work on the various specifications.”

While the individual projects are moving along, the CUFX projectleaders are hoping for more scale. For instance, while the accountopening app is a joint project with nine credit unions, that reallyshould be just the beginning if CUFX is to approach itspotential.

“The real benefit comes in when someone like MoneyDesktop canintegrate with 10 different cores and 50 different other providers.That's what we need for this to be successful,” Johnson said. “Weneed to get that kind of network of networks going. Once that getsgoing, it will make life easier for everyone involved.”

To reach that scale, more adoption is needed from the vendor andcredit union sides alike, the CUFX leaders said. “The credit unionsand cores will have to make it a priority,” Johnson said, and thatwill bring the others along.

The CUFX idea follows on the OFX financial data standard thatgrew from the XML standards that kicked off the whole idea ofintegrating standards a decade ago.

“The whole idea is that just a one-on-one brings no realbenefit,” Johnson said. “We're still basically right now doing aseries of one-offs as we write interfaces in our industry. Thebenefit of CUFX is that you don't have to understand the core orthe third party. You're all using the CUFX standard to make thattranslation through which the data flows.”

And the bottom line will then become evident.

“The overall benefit for CUFX is that it will help credit unionsintegrate and launch products and get them to market faster. Thatwill help give the industry a competitive edge,” said Moshier,CU Times' 2011 Trailblazer IT Executive of the Year.