Your problem to solve

As part of the CUES Emerge program, you will be tasked with developing a business case to address a problem that you see at your credit union or across the credit union industry. But how do you pick a problem worth solving? A problem is worth solving when it clearly ties to real pain, real value and real impact. A simple way to evaluate that is to pressure-test it across five lenses:

1. It’s painful and frequent
   The problem happens often and causes meaningful frustration, lost time, lost revenue or risk. If credit union members or staff complain about it unprompted—or have figured out temporary workarounds—that’s a strong signal.

2. Someone owns the pain and has access to a budget
   There’s someone on your credit union’s leadership team who also feels the problem and has authority to spend money fixing it. Problems without an owner tend to stall, even if they’re “important.”

3. The impact is measurable
   Solving it improves something that matters: revenue, costs, speed, quality, retention or risk. If you can’t describe the upside in numbers or outcomes, it’s likely a “nice to have.”

4. Existing solutions are inadequate
   Either people are hacking together workarounds, using tools they dislike or accepting inefficiency because better options don’t exist. This creates room for better solutions.

5. It aligns with your unfair advantage
   You have insight, access or expertise that makes you unusually well-positioned to solve this problem better than others.

A quick litmus test:

“If this problem disappeared tomorrow, would anyone urgently notice—and would they pay to keep it gone?”

If the answer is yes, you’re probably looking at a problem worth solving.

Industry-wide problems to consider

On the CUES Emerge application form, you are asked to “describe a problem at your credit union or in the industry that you are passionate about solving.” This can be an idea starter for your business case development and it doesn't necessarily have to be the problem that you will ultimately work on solving. This is your chance to think big and tackle an issue that impacts not only your credit union but the credit union industry at large. Here’s some areas to consider.