Matching Direct Credit Payments

To ensure policy balances and payment histories are kept up to date, the Simfuni system conveniently handles direct credit bank transfers. Whenever possible, direct credit payments are automatically assigned to the appropriate policy; if any discrepancies arise then the affected payments are queued in the Match Payments section of the Partner Portal, ready for manual reconciliation.

If a company bank account has been configured by Simfuni as a direct credit account, then any payment made into it will be picked up for reconciliation. Bank files are ingested into Simfuni on a regular basis, as soon as they are received from the bank.

Payment Reconciliation

There are three ways a direct credit payment can be reconciled:

• Automatically allocated - if a client makes a direct credit payment and includes the full policy number of an active policy in either the reference, code, or particulars field of the payment, then the payment is automatically allocated to that policy. It won't display in the Match Payments page, but instead goes straight to the policy's Past Payments tab with the 'Paid' status, and the policy balance and upcoming payments are adjusted accordingly.
• Manually allocated - if a client makes a direct credit payment but doesn't include complete details (e.g. by providing a partial policy number that could match multiple policies), then the payment will be quarantined in the 'Match Payments' page of the Partner Portal. This is where team members can manually reconcile payments that the system couldn't automatically match; a policy may be suggested to allocate the payment to if there was a partial match, but this suggestion can be changed to allocate the payment to a different policy. A payment will be quarantined in the Match Payments queue if:
  • The reference details of the payment only partially match a policy number or client name.
  • The reference details of the payment match an inactive policy; payments can be allocated to inactive policies but this must be done manually, the system will not automatically allocate direct credit payments to an inactive policy. Once manually allocated, the payment will display in the Past Payments tab with the 'Paid' status and the total balance of the closed policy will be adjusted accordingly.
• Manually dismissed - if a payment that was made into the direct credit bank account isn't related to any policy at all (e.g. an internal transfer) it will still show up on the Match Payments list but can easily be dismissed. Dismissing a payment from the Match Payments queue won't allocate the payment to a policy or customer, it will simply remove it from the list.

Overdue Payments

For policies with credit card or direct debit as the payment method, the policy will go overdue as soon as a payment fails. This doesn't make sense for policies with bank transfer as the payment method however, as the payment may not have failed; it could be queued up in the Match Payments list awaiting manual reconciliation.

For policies with bank transfer as the payment method, on the scheduled payment day the payment will move from Upcoming Payments to Past Payments and show the 'Pending' status. Your organization will specify how many days a policy with bank transfer as the payment method can have a scheduled payment 'Pending' before the payment is considered overdue. If that number of days passes without a payment being reconciled to the policy (either automatically or manually), then the scheduled payment is considered to have been missed and the policy is overdue. More details on the arrears process can be found here.

If a direct credit payment is made after the policy has become overdue (or the payment is later found waiting in the Match Payments queue) it can still be allocated to an overdue policy. If the payment covers the full overdue amount then the policy will be back to up date; alternatively, if the payment only partially covers the overdue amount, then the policy will still be overdue but with the number of days past due reduced accordingly.