Skip a Payment in Online Banking
I created a feature that allows users with loans to skip their next loan payment using the online banking system.
Overview
A credit union wanted to allow their members to skip a loan payment on some types of loans if certain criteria had been met. I added that feature to the online banking. The entire process was completely automated – requiring no employee involvement at all.
Features
Loan Qualification
In order for a loan to qualify for a payment to be skipped, it must meet certain criteria. There was a job that ran on the Symitar core server nightly that would watch for loans that meet those qualifications and then modify a tracking record on the loan if it was qualified.
The online banking system would looking at that tracking record and display a button next to the loan listing if the loan met the qualifications for a payment to be skipped.
Fee Selection
There is a fee that the credit union charges for skipping a loan payment. After selecting a loan to skip the payment on, the user can choose how the fee is paid. It can be added to the loan balance or it can be deducted from a checking or savings share account.
Entirely Automated Process
Once the user has completed the entire process, the system automatically skips the payment and advances the loan or charges the fee to a share. There is no manual process on the back office side to make this happen. It is completely automated and it occurs without a delay.
My Involvement
I worked with a Symitar developer to create this feature. He handled the loan qualification process that marked the loans that were available to be skipped. Then I created the online banking process that watched for those tracking records on the loans and displayed a notice to the user that the loan is available for a payment skip.
I wrote the entire online process to select the payment method and complete the workflow. Then my process called a Repgen process that the other developer created to make the loan payment skip work on the Symitar side.
After that process completed, my code refreshed the account in the online banking system which displayed the new payment due date and how the fee had been paid.
Results
The credit union received an average of over 270 payments skipped per month. The most active time was during the holiday season. The program ran for two years until it was replaced by the transition to a new online banking system that had the feature built in.