Refunds and Commission Payouts

Simfuni allows refunds to be scheduled, approved and paid out directly through the platform.

This functionality is different from logging an external refund transaction that has occurred outside the platform - see here for more details on external transactions. 

Refunds

In order to keep policy balances accurate, refunds are recorded against specific policies rather than against clients. To schedule a refund, navigate to the relevant policy, select 'Add payment' from the Actions menu, and then select 'Refund'.

When creating a refund, some payment information is displayed as additional context:

1. The total amount that has been paid against the policy since it was established.
2. The current balance of the policy. This will be $0 if the policy has been billed and then paid already within the current payment cycle, or it may be greater than $0 if the policy has been billed but not yet paid for one or more payment cycles. 
3. The most recent bank account that was used for a successful payment. This may not be the same as the current payment method, for example if the client has recently changed their payment method or if all payments attempted with the current payment method have dishonoured. 

Enter in the relevant refund details, then review and confirm the refund. This will trigger the following:

• A refund transaction to be recorded in the Past Payments transaction history. The refund payout status can be viewed by clicking the small question mark icon to the right of the transaction:
  • The transaction will initially have the 'Payout - Pending approval' status.
  • After the payout is approved and successfully paid then the status will be 'Payout - Paid'.
  • If there is an issue and the payout payment fails to process then the status will be 'Payout - Declined'
• The upcoming payments to be adjusted to reflect the refund amount.
• A record to be saved in the Completed section of the Payment Variations table.
• The refund payment to be created and quarantined in the Refunds section of the Payouts page. This refund payment will not be processed through to the client's bank account until after the required number of approvers have approved the payment. 
  
  

How Refunds Affect Upcoming Payments

If the policy is up-to-date on payments when a refund is added, then the policy will become overdue, and the amount that was refunded to the client will be rolled up into the next upcoming payment in order to keep the overall policy balance correct. Please note - the only way to adjust the overall policy balance is to waive a payment, which writes off the instalment amount so that it isn't due at all. More details on payment waivers can be found here.

If the policy is overpaid when a refund is added, then the overpaid balance will reduce by the refunded amount. If the overpaid balance covers one or more full instalment amounts then these won't change immediately, but on the day the policy is billed the system will recognise that the instalment is coming from the overpaid balance rather than process a payment from the client. This will continue on each billing day until the overpaid balance is fully cleared. If at any point the overpaid balance isn't enough to cover a full instalment, then the entire instalment will still be billed but the payment processed from the client will be reduced by the overpaid amount.

If the policy is overdue when a refund is added, then it will become more overdue. The amount that was refunded back to the client will be rolled up into the next upcoming payment in order to keep the overall policy balance correct.

If the policy is inactive when a refund is added, then the refunded amount will be deducted from the current policy balance. 

Commissions 

Commissions are calculated automatically based on the commission rate configured for each product. When a policy's premium instalment is billed, the corresponding commission amount for that instalment is automatically added to the intermediary’s daily commission total, which can be found on the Commissions tab of the Payouts page. Each daily commission payout is quarantined there with the payment reference COMMYYYYMMDD, until it has reached the required number of approvals and can be processed for payment.