The former associate vice president at Callahan & Associates said he left the company in 2013 to launch CUColloborate.

Although Brownell acknowledged the report is not statistically valid, it still delivers what he described as a strong case for what credit unions think about their mobile solutions or providers.

The survey was emailed to 4,127 credit unions nationally, but only 184 executives representing 180 unique cooperatives completed it, Brownell said.

According to second quarter 2014 NCUA call reports, 3,066 of the 6,560 credit unions reported offering a mobile solution. The 180 cooperatives that participated in the survey represented about 5.8% of credit unions that provide mobile banking.

Though Brownell conceded the results of his studies are not statistically valid, he pointed out in the mobile solutions satisfaction survey that it was designed to help credit unions benchmark and evaluate their current mobile.

"We present the number [of] client [credit union] responses and response rates for each solution to allow CU Collaborate members to decide on their own how much weight to place on the reported scores and review," Brownell wrote in the report.

He also pointed out that since most contracts with core providers are for a minimum of five years, it is extremely important for credit unions to not only review what new features a prospective platform could offer them but also understand how cooperatives on each platform feel about the functionality and support of the platforms features.

"CUCollaborate believes the best way credit unions can make the most informed decision about their core platform is through the unedited exchange of information," Brownell wrote. "We hope the survey results in this report accomplish this goal."

The 180 cooperatives that participated in the survey used 43 different mobile solutions, including 31 native mobile apps, 12 exclusively browser-based solutions and one native app, which is used only for mobile check deposit capture.

The credit unions were asked to score their mobile solution on a scale from one to six: Very poor (1), poor (2), below average (3), above average (4), good (5) and great (6).

Four of the top 10 mobile banking solutions that received the highest overall rating of "great" were Tyfone – U4ia Mobile Banking, (5.68), ConnectFSS – Connect Mobile, (5.53), Sharetec Systems Inc. (5.53) and ProfitStars-iPay Solutions – Banno Mobile (5.5).

However, Brownell acknowledged that credit unions evaluating mobile solutions would have to decide how much weight they would want to put into these "great" ratings because two of them had very low customer response rates and two of them have a very small client base.

For example, Tyfone serves only eight credit union clients, but two of their cooperatives responded to the survey.

ConnectFSS has 19 cooperative customers but only one responded.

Likewise, for Sharetec System with 32 clients, only two participated.

Of ProfitStar's five customers, two completed the survey.

Rounding out the remaining top six, which received a rating of "good" were Malauzai –Smart App (5.4), FLEX Mobile Apps (5.37), Nitro (5.36), CU Mobile Apps (5.13), D+H-Cavion Mobile Banking (5.12) and EPL Inc. Mobileearth (5).

The report also broke down the top rated mobile phone solutions among the seven peer groups from under $20 million in assets to more than $1 billion in assets.

Brownell said among the credit unions that manage more than $1 billion in assets, the average satisfaction rating was 4.59, but the average satisfaction rating began to decline among cooperatives with $500 million to $1 billion at a score of 4.39.

Among credit unions with $250 million to $500 million in assets, the average satisfaction rating was only slightly higher at 4.43 but fell again to 4.30 among cooperatives that manage $100 million to $250 million in assets.

However, for smaller credit unions, the satisfaction levels were considerably higher than their larger cooperative counterparts.

For example, the average satisfaction rating was 4.89 among cooperatives with $50 million to $100 million in assets and 4.74 for credit unions that manage assets between $20 million and $50 million.

Among credit unions with less than $20 million in assets, the average satisfaction rating was 4.88.

The scores were tallied from the ratings credit unions gave their mobile banking solutions on their general functionality, including ease of use/member interface, customizability of member interface, range of functionalities and features, content management system and security, according to the report

Credit unions also rated their mobile solutions' advanced features such as member mobile usage data analysis, interoperability of third party integrations, integration with mobile check deposit and integration with home banking. Cooperatives were asked to rate the help desk support, user training and consulting, system documents, relationship management and research and development.

What's more, the report featured detailed profiles of 51 mobile banking solutions, including those that offer native apps, an additional nine browser-based mobile banking solutions and three solutions that only offer remote capture apps.

Each profile was generated using multiple sources of data and featured the mobile solution's screen shot. Each profile also included a "voice of the customer" section that includes brief verbatim comments from credit unions about the strengths, weaknesses and developments or improvements needed for the mobile banking solutions.

Last year Brownell released a similar survey, the 2014 Core Data Processing Satisfaction Survey Report, to gauge just how providers fared. He sent questionnaires to 3,832 credit unions.

About 309 executives at 298 credit unions returned their responses.

But some questioned the statistical validity of the core data processing report.

"I believe that reports such as what CUCollaborate is providing hold a great deal of potential for credit unions when reviewing core systems," Preston Packer, director of sales and marketing at Computer Marketing Corp.'s FLEX in Sandy, Utah, said at the time regarding the 2014 core data processing satisfaction report. "However, it is imperative that Sam Brownell and CUCollaborate remain transparent in their reporting and work to improve their sample size. Otherwise, these reports will fall by the wayside, just as others have done in the past."