Has your credit union consistently received a CAMEL 1 or 2rating from your regulator? Do you manage the credit union to thatrating, and does your board judge your performance in large partbased on the CAMEL rating? Congratulations on making the regulatorshappy, but managing the credit union to a CAMEL ratio does notnecessarily mean you are satisfying the boss that matters most: themember owners.

Running the business based inordinately on CAMEL can have theunintended consequence of failing to manage for membership growthand has been confused, I fear, with a performance measurement forstrategic success. Evaluating the true performance of a CU based onCAMEL is analogous to sending a baseball player to the All StarGame because he showed up to the stadium on time, didn't misscurfew and had a shiny batting helmet.

Has our focus on CAMEL taken attention and action away from thekey drivers of the business?