PALO ALTO, Calif. – A former executive at Addison Avenue Federal Credit Union has struck out on his own to launch a financial services consulting firm for credit unions. Snyder Consulting Solutions opened for business in January and aims to provide services with an emphasis on a scorecard model that measures performance and productivity benchmarks and metrics for credit union investment and insurance programs that are made available to members. Prior to forming the firm, Pete Snyder was COO of $1.8 billion Addison Avenue FCU and prior to that he was president/CEO of Addison Avenue Financial Partners, LLC. "With all of the recent regulatory changes related to how a credit union must deliver investment services to its members (SEC and NCUA's Incidental Powers), credit unions need to take a look "under the hoods" of their investment and insurance programs to ensure that they are performing and operating at benchmarked industry levels for financial institutions," Snyder said. Obtaining the synergies and benefits of integrating traditional deposit and loan product and services with what was once looked at as nontraditional products and services like financial planning, investment brokerage and insurance services "is not as easy as it looks." Snyder, who left Addison in October 2005, said some of SCS's clients include Navy Federal Credit Union, FORUM Credit Union, Allegacy Federal Credit Union, Premier America Credit Union, Nations Heritage Federal Credit Union and SWBC (Southwest Business Corporation), an insurance brokerage provider to credit unions. "For many years too many credit unions have taken the position that merely making available to their members investment and insurance services was good enough and that it was OK to not make any money – even being OK to lose money," Snyder said. "For those credit unions that have investment and insurance programs that are financially viable, the challenge will be to for them to become financially sustainable by meeting or exceeding established industry performance and productivity standards."