Do you want to know a secret? Roughly three in 10 small creditunions do not maintain their core systems in-house, instead using“hosted” or “service bureau” solutions where the core is in factmaintained off-premises by a third-party vendor.

According to numbers provided to Credit Union Times byCallahan and Associates, 2,272 credit unions presently have hostedcores.

In institutions with under $20 million, 777 have hosted cores.There are 3,313 institutions in that asset category. Of the 208credit unions with assets over $1 billion, nine have hosted cores.“For smaller credit unions, a hosted core is where most will windup,” said David Gibbard, an executive with Birmingham, Ala., core providerEPL.