📖 Reference

Every term used in the simulation, explained

Two things separate teams that finish well from teams that do not, and neither is knowing more about credit unions. The first is understanding that the engine runs on a delay. The second is recognising the decisions that look right in the room and cost you four rounds later.

Skip to the five that catch out your seat ↓

Part one — what arrives late

Almost nothing happens in the quarter you decide it

This is the single most common surprise. A team changes a lever, sees very little, changes it back, and concludes the lever does not work. It usually did — the effect had not arrived yet.

Decision	When you see it
Investment duration	Extending moves 50% of the gap per quarter; shortening only 15%. Two to five quarters to fully reposition.
Credit box (FICO, LTV)	Applies only to new lending. About 6% of the book turns over each quarter, so a full replacement takes roughly four years.
Delinquency	Lags the underwriting that caused it by two to three quarters, then charge-offs follow another quarter behind.
Deposit pricing	Migration begins immediately, but recapture and return flow take a further quarter.
Member satisfaction	Leads deposit balances by a quarter or more. It is a forecast, not a result.
Marketing and digital	New members arrive with almost no balance and ramp over six quarters to about 85% of an established member.

What cannot be undone

Loans you have written. Every quarter's lending stays on the books and ages out slowly. A loose quarter generates delinquency for years, and tightening afterwards does not remove it — it only stops adding to it.

Duration you have bought. Extending is fast and shortening is slow, by design. A book that went long in a falling-rate quarter cannot be unwound quickly when rates turn.

Unrealised losses. AOCI sits in equity, invisible to earnings, until you sell. Selling does not create the loss — it was already there — but it does make it real, immediately, on the income statement.

Members who left. Attrition is not reversed by spending more next quarter. Acquisition and retention are different mechanisms.

What the market will not let you do

Hold every deposit in a rising cycle. Members move money when certificates pay materially more than the account it is sitting in. Retention is not the achievable outcome; recapture is. Judge yourself on how much stayed with you, not on how much never moved.

Price above market and keep volume. Borrowers shop. Pricing well above market shrinks your pipeline, and the borrowers who still accept are the ones with fewer options — so the credit quality of what you write gets worse as well as the volume getting smaller.

Buy members with marketing alone. Marketing amplifies a pricing advantage. Where you have none, spending more achieves very little.

Sell a loan pool whenever you want. Buyers appear when they want a pool, and appetite thins as deposit competition rises. The quarter you most need to raise cash is usually the quarter nobody is bidding.

Decisions that cost more the longer you wait

Terming out wholesale funding. An advance holds the rate it was drawn at until it matures. In a rising cycle, terming out early saves roughly a million dollars over six quarters; terming out late costs more than staying overnight would have. This is the sharpest single decision in the simulation and the easiest to miss.

Shortening the investment book. The glide is asymmetric on purpose. Deciding to shorten after the marks have moved means paying for a repositioning you could have had cheaply.

Tightening credit. Because policy applies only to new lending, tightening late protects only the small slice you write from that point on.

How you are scored

Apex is a standing, not a running total. It is where you sit right now. A strong quarter does not bank anything, and a weak one is not permanent.

Seventy per cent is regulatory — your CAMEL composite, plus hard floors if capital falls into prompt corrective action territory. Thirty per cent is peer: how you compare to real credit unions of similar size over the same historical period.

The peer half can move without you doing anything. If the peer group's delinquency worsens faster than yours, your percentile improves while your absolute number gets worse. Both readings are true and they answer different questions.

The institution you inherit is below peer on cost. Operating expense runs above the peer median from the first quarter. Reaching median takes genuine improvement, not merely competence.

Where the roles collide

Each seat sees intelligence the others do not, and the interesting decisions are the ones where two roles are pulling in opposite directions.

Tension	What it looks like
CFO vs CLO	The CFO needs funding cost down; the CLO needs volume up. Cheap funding usually means losing deposits, and lost deposits mean less to lend.
CLO vs CEO	Growth needs a looser credit box; capital needs a tighter one. Neither is right on its own.
CMO vs CFO	Marketing amplifies a pricing advantage the CFO has to pay for. Spending without competitive pricing wastes both budgets.
CEO vs everyone	The bonus dividend retains members and costs earnings. The capital target constrains everything and protects everything.

Part two — what looks right at the time

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Take over Lakeside Community Credit Union as all four executives and run it through a full scenario. Your final score posts to the solo leaderboard under your name.

SCENARIO

How long is a run?Scenario length Each scenario runs its own arc — six quarters for The Great Unwind, eight for The Shock, twelve for The Long Cycle. Rounds beyond the scenario's authored arc freeze on the final quarter's economic conditions.

DIFFICULTY

What does difficulty change?Only what happens TO you The economy, the balance sheet you inherit and the scoring are identical at every setting. A disruption costs a well-positioned institution very little, so this is a test of the position you have built rather than a handicap. Scores are only comparable within a tier.

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Choose Your Role

Each role has unique decisions and private information. Pick the one assigned to you — or choose freely if self-assigning.

— seats —

CEO

Strategy, capital targets, growth posture, staffing. Final override authority. Only role that sees all four executive summaries.

CFO

Investment portfolio, deposit pricing, wholesale funding. Full ALM risk view. Sees cost of funds detail others don't.

CLO

Loan volumes, rates, credit standards. Only role that sees the loan book by VINTAGE — the credit quality written in each quarter, and how it surfaces later.

CMO

Member growth, deposit strategy, digital investment. Private Member Satisfaction Index every quarter.

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FED—

UNEMP—

HPI Q/Q—

DEPOSIT—

CU ApexSim

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Round —

Executive Dashboard

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Apex Composite Score — Regulatory (70%) + Peer Performance (30%)

Current Apex Score

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Complete round to score

0PEER AVG: 62100

Submit your role decisions and process the quarter to see your score.

Net Worth RatioNet Worth Ratio Total equity ÷ total assets. Must stay above 7% to avoid Prompt Corrective Action. "Well-capitalized" threshold = 7%+.

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Return on AssetsROA Annualized net income ÷ average total assets. Peer benchmarks vary by scenario period — see Apex Score Guide for details.

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Peer median: —

Net Interest MarginNIM Net interest income ÷ earning assets. The spread between loan/investment yield and deposit cost. Peer benchmarks vary by scenario period.

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Peer median: —

Efficiency RatioEfficiency Ratio Operating expenses ÷ net revenue. Lower is better. Above 85% is a warning sign across all scenarios.

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Peer median: — · lower=better

Net Cost of OperationsNet Cost of Operations Operating expense less non-interest income, over assets. Lower is better. Unlike the efficiency ratio it carries no margin term, so it does not move when rates do.

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Peer median: — · lower=better

Total AssetsTotal Assets Sum of cash, investments, loans, and other assets. Industry tier benchmarks: $500M–$1B is the peer band for this CU.

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Net LoansNet Loans Gross loan portfolio minus the Allowance for Credit Losses (ACL). Largest earning asset for most CUs. ACL was called ALLL (Allowance for Loan & Lease Losses) prior to the CECL transition; the call report line and examiner language use ACL.

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Total SharesTotal Shares Member deposits across share draft, regular shares, money market, and certificates. The CU's primary funding source.

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MembersMembers Total active member-owners. Each is both a depositor and stakeholder. Member growth carries 12% of the Peer Performance basket. Members also bring relationship deposits — checking and savings — which build over about six quarters.

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Loan-to-ShareLoan-to-Share Ratio Total loans ÷ deposits. Examiners assess this alongside your liquidity ratio and FHLB reliance — a high LTS with adequate liquid assets and low wholesale funding is acceptable. Only penalized when combined with a thin liquidity buffer.

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Delinquency RateDelinquency Rate Loans 60+ days past due. Leading indicator of future charge-offs. Below 0.8% is healthy; above 1.5% triggers examiner attention.

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Net Charge-Off RateNCO Rate Loans written off net of recoveries. Lagging indicator — follows delinquency by 2–4 quarters.

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Liquidity RatioLiquidity Ratio Liquid assets (cash + short-term investments) ÷ total assets. Below 5% triggers examiner concern.

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AOCIAccumulated Other Comprehensive Income The unrealised mark-to-market on the investment book. It does not touch net income unless you sell, but it sits directly in equity and therefore in your net worth ratio. Widening losses in a rising-rate cycle are the 2022–2023 story.

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Team Decision Status — This Round

CEO

⏳ Pending

CFO

⏳ Pending

CLO

⏳ Pending

CMO

⏳ Pending

Debrief

Round-by-round reflection · responses flow to the facilitator report

Financial Statements

Quarterly timeline · scroll horizontally for additional quarters

CAMEL Scorecard

REGULATOR-REALISTIC COMPOSITE

Capital

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Asset Quality

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Management

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Earnings

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Liquidity

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Examiner Commentary

AWAITING ROUND RESULTSProcess a round to receive CAMEL scores and examiner commentary.

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Session Leaderboard

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Credit Union

Apex Score

NW Ratio

Peer %ile

Members +/-

SCORING: 70% REGULATORY + 30% PEER PERFORMANCE Apex Score combines a Regulatory Score (CAMEL composite + PCA hard-floors, 70%) with a Peer Performance Score (8-metric basket benchmarked against NCUA peer distributions, 30%). Full balance sheets and individual decisions remain confidential.

📖 Reference

Almost nothing happens in the quarter you decide it

What cannot be undone

What the market will not let you do

Decisions that cost more the longer you wait

How you are scored

Where the roles collide

Get in touch

CU ApexSim

Terms of Use

END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT

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📖 Reference

Almost nothing happens in the quarter you decide it

What cannot be undone

What the market will not let you do

Decisions that cost more the longer you wait

How you are scored

Where the roles collide

Get in touch

CU ApexSim

Welcome to CU ApexSim 👋

1 What is CU ApexSim?

2 Your Team's Four Roles

CEO — Strategy

CFO — Investments & Funding

CLO — Lending

CMO — Members

3 How a Round Works

4 How You're Scored — Regulatory + Peer Performance

5 Ready to Explore

Terms of Use

END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT

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Pick Your Team

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CEO

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CLO

CMO

Executive Dashboard

Debrief

Financial Statements

CAMEL Scorecard

Round History

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Broadcast Announcement

All Teams — Full View

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Inject Curveball Event

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