Automated credit accounting and escrow processes out of the box – TurnKey Lender v.7.10

Welcome TurnKey Lender v.7.10.

This is our biggest platform upgrade in 2023 and we’re happy to share the new capabilities, features, and updates that will make the lives of lenders and their borrowers easier in small details as well as in major new ways.

Features with most business impact in this release are the new escrow functionality and the accounting add-on. Nonetheless, we’ve developed and rolled out serious upgrades to our Calculations engine, for more credit product configuration freedom, the reporting module, the Decision engine, and much more.

Let’s dive in.

Accounting in lending made simple, out-of-the-box

One of the biggest challenges every lender faces and most struggle with is synchronising their lending data with their accounting solution in an efficient and streamlined manner.

Happy to report – this problem is no longer if you use TurnKey Lender starting with v.7.10.

The new extension of the TurnKey Lender platform allows creditors to establish a fully automated flow of structured accounting data from your loan management system into your Xero or QuickBooks, saving accountants and finance departments hundreds of hours of work.

The TurnKey Lender Accounting addon offers creditors who use the TurnKey Lender platform a new way to reduce their operational costs and human error while achieving a drastically improved credit accounting experience.

The new solution builds an elegant bridge between the lending team and the accounting team, syncing the data in the loan management system with accounting books. In addition, it makes it possible to always keep accounting records up to date since the addon syncs data every day.

Set up a matching chart of accounts in the addon & enjoy fresh data in your accounting system daily. The extension allows the following out of the box.

• Define what data to collect from the accounts and organise journals to meet your exact needs
• Sync accounts with Xero & QuickBooks (One-click synchronization, ability to hide/unhide excessive accounts
• Generate custom Excel reports for use outside of TurnKey Lender
• The data is pushed into your accounting solution daily
• Scales seamlessly to accommodate your demand
• Intuitive management of accrued & received revenue

Personal fee library

The new fee library feature allows you to make sure your accounting software doesn’t get filled with random fee names employees come up with.

As an admin, you will create a list of fees that can be used in your business, with predefined details. All common fee types come ready-to-use so you can just fine-tune the granular details.

During work, you and your staff simply choose the fee to apply from the company library. This ensures the streamlined flow of payment and fee data into your accounting software as well as eliminates confusion in the fee management which commonly rises as operations grow.

Credit calculations updates

TurnKey Lender is loved by clients for the agility and flexibility of its Credit Product Builder. In v.7.10 we have continued to beef it up with new popular settings and options that will save our clients manual configuration time.

Manual fees

Credit products in leasing, mortgage, healthcare, and many other business verticals require the usage of ad-hoc fees throughout the lifecycle of the loan. With this update, we’re giving lenders a simple way to apply a fee to an active loan at any point when it is needed.

You can apply the fee with the next instalment, instantly, add it to the principal, or use a different model. This feature shaves off a lot of human error and simplifies charging non-scheduled fees like enforcement fees, ​call charges​t, parking costs​, legal fees​, additional services for leased items, etc.

Rule 78 

Rule 78 credit product calculations and payment planning, also known as “pre-computed loans”, are now available to TurnKey Lender users out of the box.

Rule 78 is an industry-wide method of calculating and applying interest that includes charging a larger portion of the interest in the earlier loan payments, which allows for a higher ROI for the lender.

More Scheduling Capabilities

Grace period in the loan term

Backoffice users can now choose whether the grace period will be included in the general term of the loan or added to it.

New Due Date management options in Advanced mode

In the Advanced settings of your Credit Product Builder, due dates can now be set up to define:

• Payments can be set on the first or the last day of the installment. One of the most common uses of the scheduled payment date on the first day of an installment is a common business model Annuity Due which is common in some industries. Some common examples of annuities due include rent payments, insurance premiums, car lease payments, and rent payments.
• End of month due dates setting can be defined, with which you can set the installment date to the last day of the month regardless of the number of days in a specific month.

Escrow Functionality

Lenders can now enable and use Escrow accounts in their TurnKey Lender Platform.

This allows an escrow agent to receive and disburse funds for the primary transacting party under agreed-upon conditions. This applies to most of the real estate industry where the mortgage company establishes an escrow account to pay property tax, insurance, and other destinations during the term of the mortgage.

The main idea of the functionality is to provide a convenient tool to ensure that there are always enough funds in the escrow account but no excessive payment burden is laid on the borrower.

• Escrow fee included in the general schedule
  • The Lender can collect an obligatory escrow fee. The fee is fixed for the 1^st year and can be calculated based on the results of the escrow analysis for every concurrent year. What is important is the fee is collected as a part of the usual installments.
  • The Borrower pays obligatory escrow fees as a part of the usual installments saving extra hassle and making the process as smooth and seamless as possible.
• Manage escrow account
  • Replenish the escrow account beyond the loan schedule: payment to escrow can be easily registered in the system
  • Withdraw from the escrow account: register withdrawals to different „destinations” (payment purposes), e.g. insurance, taxes, appliances, etc.

• Extensive escrow balance analysis and schedule calculation
  • Both the Borrower and the Lender can keep track of payments, see the state of the escrow account and operation history

 

• The Lender can view payments for the last period and schedule payments for the next period. In this case, monthly escrow payment is determined by estimating upcoming expenses (e.g. annual tax and insurance expenses) and their dates.

• This allows the creation of an escrow balance projection for the coming year.
• TurnKey Lender uses the projection to define the obligatory payment along the schedule in such a manner that there are always enough funds on the escrow balance to make the necessary payments.
• Return of the funds
  Along with that, a dedicated setting enables automatic return of the funds to the Borrower, subject to the Settings → Application process → Escrow → Min overpayment to return value)

Improved Excel Reporting

Operate granular data in custom reports with smart markers

Pro TurnKey Lender users have come to love the way our Reports Builder lets them create custom razor-focused reports for their stakeholders, investors, and management. In this update, we’re making it easier and quicker to pull gold nuggets of data from your system.

Now, while building your custom report, you can see all the smart markers that exist in your system and can choose to pull exactly the data you need into the report in exactly the manner you need it.

You can create reports templates directly in TurnKey Lender with the ‘Create report template’ button. While the template has to be formatted to make a nice report, getting all the necessary markers in a couple of simple clicks will significantly simplify the use of the functionality.

Find all your reports in a personal depository

Every loan officer or executive gets a little stressed out every time a complex report they worked on for a while gets stuck during generation. We don’t like that either.

This is why now in TurnKey Lender generation of all reports is done in the background and the results are stored in your individual report depository. Your reports are stored in your depository for 30 days so as not to clutter it.

Decision engine improvements

Decision context

An important change in the decision-making process is the new way in which we explain the credit decision our Decision engine has come to for each particular application. You can see exactly what data triggered what warning.

Decision rules

New decision rules for Experian US, Flinks, and loan applications have been added for a more granular understanding of the borrower’s creditworthiness.

Bank verification improvements

The back end of the bank verification process has been significantly improved and streamlined, allowing the lender to get the needed information quicker and more securely.

• Scoring mode (Accounts to analyze)
• Validity period
• Recurrent loan applications
  If there is a valid bank statement report, then the step ‘Verify Bank Account’ in the loan application flow is auto-skipped.

Integrations

New Integrations

• Quickbooks and XERO integrations support the new accounting addon.
• New localised integrations with Repay (Canada) and Zum Rails (Canada) allow us to better process payments in Canada.

Improved integrations

• Credit Bureau

Optimized automatic Credit Bureau requests to avoid excessive requests and save lenders’ funds. In particular, Transunion (Canada) integration has been improved for easier soft and hard pulls.

• Flinks insights

The list of Flinks (bank statements) attributes our system interprets and uses in customer risk analysis got extended which gives you even better instant insight.

• Experian Notification

Experian (US) integration updated to notify the lender if obligatory reports haven’t been sent on time. This is particularly important, as untimely reporting can cause fines over the lender.

Other Improvements

Last but not least some more updates have been performed to make our system even better.

Two-factor authentication 

Two-factor authentication is one of the most reliable and widely-accepted digital identity confirmation methods today. To ensure modern security standards, borrowers and staff need to receive a code over SMS or email to log in, as a second layer of protection seeing as just a password isn’t enough.

Separate Image for the Login Page

You can now customize the theme with separate images for the login and welcome pages.

Other UI and UX updates

Numerous UI and UX improvements have need implemented to simplify loan management, work with documents, and the platform design configuration.

That is quite an extensive release that makes lending easier at each step of the loan life cycle. And as always, we’re already working on the next one so stay tuned for news.

Ready to start your TurnKey Lender success story today? Book an intro call today.