How does a Policy Group impact the transaction?

A Policy Group allows you to set default values for the calculations policy, document policy, variable rate policy, fee policy, property costs, loan definition, and/or a late charge policy. Setting these up are optional. Based on a user's permissions, Policy Groups are created within Administration. Policy Groups are shared with organizations. At transaction time, on the Loan Definition page, the Policy Group list is filtered based on the selected organization.

When a variable rate policy has been selected in a Policy Group, it will default into the field on the Calculations page and any settings associated to that policy will be added to the transaction.

When a late charge policy has been selected in a Policy Group, it will default into the field on the Calculations page and any settings associated to that policy will be added to the transaction. Within the Policy Group, you can determine whether the group of late charge fields are read-only. If the Policy Group states the late charge is read-only, all fields including whether the late charge applies are read-only.

When a fees policy has been selected in a Policy Group, the list of fees associated to the policy will default into the transaction on the Calculations page. On the Fee Detail page, the fee name is read-only on fees from a policy.

When a property costs policy has been selected in a Policy Group, the list of property cost items associated to the policy will default into the transaction on the Calculations page. The property costs area is limited to 10 escrowed items. If more are defined in the property costs policy, only the first 10 will default into the transaction.

If a variable rate policy, late charge policy or fees policy has not been selected in a Policy Group, those fields will default to blank as they do without using a Policy Group.

• Scenario 1: A Policy Group is selected and you go back to change the organization associated to the transaction.

  With this scenario, the variable rate and late charge policies will default to blank. The fees list, property costs list and specific fields associated with a variable rate or late charge will not change. For example, if the late charge policy name is RE Purchase Money and the late charge is a fixed rate of $25.00 when the organization is changed the late charge policy, the field will be blank and the late charge of $25.00 will still apply.

• Scenario 2: A Policy Group is selected and you go back to change the selected Policy Group.

  With this scenario, based on which policies have been selected in the Policy Group, those fields will be updated. If there is no default in the Policy Group, there is no change to the policy and fields associated to that policy. For example, if you select a Policy Group that only has a late charge policy selected, those are the only fields that will get updated.

• Scenario 3: A Policy Group in Administration is updated and you want the changes to apply to an existing transaction.

  With this scenario, within the transaction you would use the refresh button next to the Policy Group field. This will update any policies associated to the Policy Group. For example, if the Policy Group has a document policy and fees associated to it both the document policy and fees will be updated. If you only want to update the data associated to the document policy use the refresh button next to the Document Policy field, instead of refreshing the entire template.

• Scenario 4: Change a Policy Group from one that does not allow the late charge to be modified in the transaction to one that does not have a late charge defined at all.

  In this situation, when switching from a Policy Group that does have a late charge policy with a read-only setting to a template with no late charge policy defined, the late charge fields will keep whatever values existed prior to changing the template and will be editable.