Thursday · 14 May 2026
About

An independent press for an industry that doesn't have one.

The Credit Union Wire covers cooperative finance the way trade press paid for by the industry never has — primary-source, data-driven, accountable to members.

Credit unions are $2.34 trillion[NCUA Q4 2025] of member-owned American finance, serving roughly 144.7 million members[NCUA Q4 2025]. They are chartered, regulated, and structurally distinct from for-profit banks. They are also covered, often, by publications dependent on vendors and organizations within the system they report on.

The Credit Union Wire exists to do the independent, data-driven reporting that beat has lacked. We pull from regulatory filings, court records, and public datasets — not press releases. We disclose funding relationships and reject any support that comes with editorial control.

Theory of change

Independent journalism, paired with open methodology, produces accountability that members, regulators, and policymakers act on. Vendor-sponsored trade media cannot do this work cleanly because the business model is in tension with the reporting. We can because funders, sponsors, subscribers, and customers do not get editorial influence.

01Independent reporting
02Primary-source data
03Public accountability
04Healthier system for members

Who runs the Wire

Founder · Publisher · Reporting
Joshua Herman

Former NCUA examiner. CEO of CU WealthNext. Founded The Credit Union Wire to do the data-driven, independent reporting the cooperative finance beat has lacked. Signs every story; owns every correction.

Reach directly · josh@thecreditunionwire.com
The Wire's editorial system
Human-supervised, AI-assisted

Software flags filings, drafts from sourced records, and re-pulls every number from its primary source on publish. The publisher reads and signs every story before it ships. Humans set the rules, own every correction, and answer every reader.

Methodology · read the standards

The organization

The Credit Union Wire is published by The Credit Union Wire LLC, a Michigan limited liability company. A nonprofit conversion and federal 501(c)(3) determination are planned future steps and will be disclosed publicly when they happen.

The journalism is free to read and will remain so. Sponsorships, grants, gifts, subscriptions, and paid data-access products support the work only when they preserve the editorial wall: no story selection, no draft review, no pre-clearance, no veto, no quiet retraction, and no favorable coverage expectation.

Conflicts & disclosures

Independence requires saying out loud what could compromise it. The publisher's outside interests, in full:

Publisher disclosures · last updated 13 May 2026

CU WealthNext
Joshua Herman is CEO of CU WealthNext, a commercial credit-union technology company. The Wire does not cover CU WealthNext, its customers, or its competitors except through public regulatory record.
Runline AI
The publisher holds equity as an advisor to Runline AI, a company outside the cooperative-finance beat. The Wire published two stories referencing Runline AI in early coverage (April 2026); neither was commissioned, paid for, or pre-reviewed by Runline. As of May 2026, Runline AI is excluded from future Wire coverage. Both prior stories remain published with this disclosure linked from each — consistent with the Wire's commitment not to silently remove published work.
Sponsors, customers & vendors
The Wire accepts no vendor sponsorship, paid editorial placement, or advertising dressed as journalism. Trade groups, leagues, institutions, and other sponsors may support the work only under disclosed terms that preserve full editorial independence.
Major donors
Individual gifts, foundation grants, and institutional sponsorships of $5,000 or more will be named publicly here once received.

How to reach the Wire

Tips, documents, leaked records. Send them. Source protection is non-negotiable. Encrypted intake available on request.

Corrections. If we got something wrong, we want to know. Every correction is logged publicly with the date and what changed.

Letters to the editor. Disagreements welcome. We publish thoughtful ones.

Foundations & funders. See the support page for the funder path and a direct route to the publisher.

josh@thecreditunionwire.com