Your Simpology channel will include a Products Engine, which allows you to define your Products that you make available to your customers and partners.
The Products Engine allows you to define everything from Product Codes, to Rates, Fees, Features and Availability Logic.
Your Collections of Products that you configure can then be made available to:
lodgement or assessment journeys (eg Loanapp)
external systems via API subscription (eg Aggregator partners, websites)
The Products Engine will only be accessible by those members of your organisation that have the correct Permissions (ie you can control who can view and/or edit your Products Engine).
Where is the Products Engine?
The Products Engine is found in Solutions/Loan Data/Product:
Pre-Requisite: Set up a Collection
To configure a set of Products, you need to first ensure that a Collection has been established. To find out more about Collections, please click here.
The Collection is important as it is what you 'connect' to journeys and workflows.
When you setup your Products Engine, you will also have Groups and Subgroups that you can setup:
Collection: this is the Primary Name of your products collection. You can build any number of Collections in your Products Engine. Each Collection is what is then attached to a lodgement journey, or subscribed to by an external partner such as a CRM
Group: this is a way to segment your products. You can create any Groups that you deem suitable, and in fact you can just have the 1 group. Most lenders create Owner Occupied & Investment as their Secondary Groups.
Groups can then be selected, rather than whole Collections, when you attach products to journeys, workflows or subscriptions
Sub-group: this is another layer of segmentation that you can configure. Again, you can have any number of sub-groups, or just the 1 subgroup. Most lenders create Principle & Interest, and Interest Only as their sub-groups.
Sub-groups can then be selected, rather than whole Collections or Groups, when you attach products to journeys, workflows or subscriptions
The primary collection for a lender will be Residential Mortgages. Remember that it is Collections that Simpology journeys and external parties subscribe to.
Create A New Product
Now that you have setup the grouping logic, you can start adding products. If you have added >1 Group and Sub-group - make sure you are in the correct one!
When you are in the correct Collection > Group > Sub-group, Click Add:
A new Product Setup section will display. Fill in the details of your product. You can complete the high-level details for the new Product such as Name, Product Code, Version, Validity Date
The dates that the product version is valid from is important to set. It will default as immediate, but if you are working on a product that will only be available in the future, you can set a future date, and the product will become available at that date.
If you are do not have an official proposed end date of a product's availability, its a good idea to make valid a good time (eg 5 years) into the future. If the Valid to date expires, so does your product.
Who is maintaining the data - Simpology, or the Lender.
Select Comparison Rate Calculator (default is "standard").
Select the default interest type for the product
If fixed, set the default fixed period (usually 1 year).
For a closer look at the initial Product Setup screen and its controls, click here.
Rate Management
Next set the interest rate/s applicable to the product. Note that if you don't have comprehensive details, the Base Rate, Reference Rate Benchmark Type must be added as a minimum. For a closer look at the Rate Management section, click here.
When you are finished, press SAVE. This will set the Product as part of your collection.
A note on the 'Template'
You will note a button called Template:
Which when you click on opens a popup:
The Template sets the naming conventions for your product variations, which are generated as a result of your configuration, in our Rate Grid.
In the example above {RN}-{LV}-{LA}-{IT}-{RT}-{LP}, the whole name of the product will be :
Retail Name - LVR range - Loan AmountRange - InterestType - RepaymentType - LoanPurpose.
ie WhizBang Home Loan-0-80-$150,000-$1,000,000-V-PI-OO
You can change the default to incorporate more or less placeholder information to be a part of the name of each product variation.
Note that any of these elements will only be in the "name" of the product if the element is included in the configuration.
Configure your Product Features
Next you will want to set the features of the product. Click on Features, and use the drop down to select features you wish to add:
NOTE if you prefer, you can also expand the section to scroll through all available feature settings:
For each feature type, click the + button to add detail. You do not need to save until right at the end of your work.
If you set that any of the features to "Show in grid" - this will mean this feature will alter the rate to borrower for that variation of the product (ie will create a new line on the rate grid).
Key features that can effect interest rates on a product are normally Repayment Type (IO and P&I), LVR bands, and Loan Amount Bands.
eg
For each new variation, you can also set if it "adjusts" the interest rate, from the Base Rate set in the primary setup.
Here the LVR bands configured on the product will appear on the Grid as individual variations of the product; and also will vary the interest rate per variation:
Continue through the features and set as you need to for the Product. Remember to 'show in grid' any of the features that you want to create a new 'variation' of the product:
For a closer look at Product Features, and the controls you have for each, click here.
SET FEES
Next you will want to set the fees that are/may be charged on the product.
You are able to set the Type, Amount, Calculation method, When it is to be charged, If it is included in the Comparison Rate, and more:
When you have finished setting all Features and Fees, click SAVE
For a closer look at Product Fees, and the controls you have for each, click here.
The Rate Grid
When you have finished configuring your Product and its Features, and click SAVE, the Rate Grid will be generated.
It will display a line item for every variation of the product, based on your configuration, and what you have configured to "Vary interest Rate" or "Show in Grid".
The number of variations will depend on the features you have set to "varies interest rate" or "show in grid".
If you don't see all the expected variations, its easy to go back into features and add more detail. If you make changes, and click SAVE, it will then regenerate the Rate Grid.
It's important that the Rate Grid is correct, as this is the primary output to subscribing journeys and systems.
Note that the Name column will generated the templated name for each variation as per the elements you set up in the Template above.
For a closer look at the Rate Grid, please click here.
Adding logic to the Rate Grid
While the Rate Grid is derived from the work you have done configuring the product, you may still want to apply even more logic on the rate grid to finesse your configuration and output. The Engine allows you to then set some simple manual overrides, and then more complex business rule to the Rate Grid.
Manual Overrides
You can delete any invalid variants that have been auto-calculated, if need be, by un-checking the 'valid' box. This will remove the variant from the Rate Grid that will be published.
You can then toggle the Display Valid Only to YES and the pink, invalid variants will be removed, leaving only valid variants displaying on screen:
You can also check and manually amend the rates on each variation, where required. In order to change a variant rate that has been auto-calculated, you can tick the checkbox next to the rate, and amend. You will be able to hover over this rate to see the calculated rate at any time:
There is a whole lot of great functionality for managing the rate grid.
For a full breakdown of Rate Grid Logic functionality in this section, click here.
DOCUMENTS
This section allows you to upload documents that are related to the loan product, and can also be made available via the APIs.
To add a document, click on New Doc
Complete the detail and upload the document:
For a full breakdown of the functionality in this section, click here.