Introduction to Credit Bureau Interface

This user guide contains the needed information to generate an extract and transmitted to Equifax and TransUnion on monthly basis. It also outline the requirements surrounding the submission of a Credit Bureau request to Equifax and its subsequent display for prospects and existing members. Currently, the Credit Bureau request for single or joint members is sent to Equifax through the Equifax iDecision web interface.

CBR Extract

An extract is produced from the banking system and transmitted to Equifax and TransUnion on monthly basis. The extract contains information about all retail loans, mortgages and lines of credit. Information includes but not limited to: name, legal address, mailing address, phone number, SIN number, date of birth, credit limit, balance owing, open date, close date (if applicable), monthly payment amount required (payments that are other than monthly are converted to monthly equivalents), status of loan e.g. paid as agreed, delinquent, account numbers

A minimum delinquency amount is set in a parameter application for extract process. If the account (loan, mortgage or line of credit) is delinquent but the amount of delinquency is less than the value specified in the parameter, then the concerned account is reported as current in the extract. For example if the minimum delinquency amount is set at $5.00 and a line of credit is delinquent -$4.50, then the line of credit will be reported as current and not delinquent.

Equifax and TransUnion requires that all addresses should comply with the Canada post address standards. Records included in the extract with non-complying legal addresses are rejected and the credit facility will not be show on the inquiry.

The AS-IS output is done as such that the extract from the banking system (in ASCII format) is sent by OSC to both Equifax and TransUnion, monthly, to update/report on members’ credit position. As the current banking system is being phased out, Open Solutions (OSC) has been able to remain on the Metro 1 format; however, as per Equifax and TransUnion, any new interfaces must be developed with Metro 2 format.

Although Metro 2 format is fixed format standards, interpretation of some fields between Canadian and US requirements are very different, and for some fields requirements between the credit bureau are different as well. (Equifax considers more field’s mandatory than TransUnion). Therefore, any flexibility that can be provided will extremely useful.

The Covenanter relationship is extracted from the lending product rather than the relationship customer. The Covenanter should be reported in the J segment (associated consumer) according to Metro2 specification. Guarantor or Covenanter as a relationship for retail members can be captured under membership. This will not be a gap any more.

LOC is defined through Limits functionality in Temenos Transact. A revolving limit record is attached to demand accounts (checking or saving).

Credit Bureau Reporting (CBR) process needs to extract the information about delinquency details from ACCOUNT application and LOC balances.

CBR Idecision Tool

An XML is produced from the banking system and transmitted to Equifax. The Credit Bureau report will be printed in a defined format and all the elements of the Equifax response must be retrievable online in this same format within Temenos Transact at a later date.

Users have the ability to submit a Credit Bureau request to Equifax for existing members, or for prospects during the on-boarding process. Multiple requests can be done for any one member. User have the ability to send single and/or joint Credit Bureau requests. Users can only request a joint Credit Bureau for two applicants whose relationships are identified as primary and spouse.

The functionality must be available to be invoked by the account opening process workflow. The response from Equifax must contain iDecision`s decision summary elements and the detailed credit bureau report elements. The debit card limit provided on the decision summary screen is based on the beacon score returned from Equifax.

The response message from Equifax, including iDecision`s decision summary elements and the detailed credit bureau report elements, are stored in the live application, for the corresponding CIF and prospect so that it can be selected for retrieval at a later time. Responses for joint credit bureaus also stored at the live application for prospect or CIF level for each individual included in the original request.

When retrieved at a later date, the decision summary and related credit bureau information will be able to display the following:

• Requesting a Credit Bureau:
  • Authorized Temenos Transact users with the ability to initiate an Equifax Credit Bureau request for a single or joint, existing member or prospect. When users initiate a request, the system automatically sends the applicable member details to Equifax in their standard System-To-System (STS) message format.
  • The iDecision interface will process the member information against the parameters set up for strategy decision tree with Equifax, and will then send a response back to Temenos Transact in Equifax’s standard System-To-System (STS) message format(xml format).
• Storing the response:
  • Temenos Transact stores the Equifax decision summary and credit bureau, for retrieval at a later date. If the request was completed for a prospect, Temenos Transact will store the response for the prospect CIF record in the CAMB.L.CONS.CRED.REPRT application using the Prospect CIF Id . If the request was completed for an existing member, Temenos Transact will store the response in the CAMB.L.CONS.CRED.REPRT application using respective member CIF Id . If a joint credit bureau was requested for two prospects, the decision summary and credit bureau reports will be stored in the CAMB.L.CONS.CRED.REPRT application for the two prospects using the id as Primary Prospect CIF Id.
  • As per privacy legislation, once a new credit bureau has been requested for a member or prospect CIF that has an existing credit bureau stored, the previous report and decision must be deleted and the new request stored. Only one bureau and decision must be stored per member or prospect CIF.
  • For a Temenos Transact prospect, the Equifax response will be purged along with the prospect CIF record according to the parameters set out by the bank in relation to purging prospect CIF records.

• Parameter setup for iDecision : The four distinct parameters are required to access the strategy decision tree through iDecision to process the credit bureau request message.
  • Equifax URL.
  • Customer code of the bank.
  • Customer number.
  • Security code.