Enhanced Settlement Summary | Support for banks

[Jarrod_McAleese]

Hi Community,

Over the past 12 months, PEXA has been developing new functionality to help streamline the completion of financial settlement in the platform.

Since April, banks and practitioners have piloted a new Enhanced Settlement Summary (ESS) – and we’re now excited to be proceeding with a phased deployment of this functionality.

Phase 1: From 12 October 2020 the new ESS will be live in selected Workspaces:

• where Workspaces are created in relation to a South Australian property, or;
• where the Subscriber has selected to have the new ESS switched on regardless of jurisdiction.

What changes will Phase 1 include for Financial Institutions?

Workspaces with the new ESS switched on, as per the above conditions, will have:

• The ability to indicate Yes/No if your organisation is collecting Surplus funds (instead of a conversation and similar to the current indicator for providing Shortfall).
• If providing Shortfall or collecting Surplus funds, the ability to access these amounts as calculated by the system and confirmed by the Practitioners (instead of the current "Total Funds Required to Settle" (TFRS) and Conversations).

Phase 2: Deployment to all Workspaces (targeting Feb 2021, with more information to follow when available)

Support

To help ensure a smooth transition, we’re providing a number of resources to support financial institutions and your operational teams.

Attached, you’ll find:

• An Incoming Mortgagee help card
• A Mortgagee on Title help card

FI webinar

Below you can watch our ESS webinar, run by our Training team.

Please also see below and attached FAQs.

Q: Would the Financial Institution receive a notification via email when practitioners hit the "Ready for shortfall" button?

A: The notification is currently generated on the new task within the Workspace. Email notifications are targeted for a November release.

Q: Will ‘Ready for Shortfall’ and ‘Ready for Surplus’ be included in PEXA Planner?

A: PEXA Planner’s ‘Get to Ready’ dashboard will have additional filters to manage the Ready for Shortfall/Surplus. Date to be confirmed.

Q: Will practitioners be trained to use ‘Ready for Shortfall’ and ‘Ready for Surplus’ buttons and will there be a time frame that they will need to notify Financial Institutions that they are ready for shortfall?

A: There is no set time frame, however, training campaigns including webinars, help cards, PEXA community posts, specifically related to confirmation of shortfall/surplus and timeframes have and will continue to be socialised with the practitioner market.

PEXA is also including interactive help in the workspace for all Subscribers. This will include various pop ups and banners prompting actions to confirm ready for shortfall/surplus prior to day of settlement when possible.

Q: Can the Incoming Mortgagee still load a source line for Lodgement Fees?

A: There is no change to the ability to add any source line items required.

Q: If ‘funds required’ is being auto calculated from figures input, do we anticipate seeing confirmation of shortfall/surplus happening later in the workspace?

Currently practitioners can know the total funds, however, may not have the individual figures to auto-calculate (e.g. stamp duty not assessed). Total funds required to settle can still be manually input.

A: PEXA will monitor this carefully and can make necessary changes if this becomes a new trend of late confirmations. One of the issues right now is the TFRS tends to get changed a few times leading up to settlement. The ESS was designed to provide greater accuracy and confidence in the figures confirmed.

Q: If the practitioner has marked ‘Ready for Shortfall’ or ‘Ready for Surplus’ and not all documents are created, i.e. Mortgage or Discharge, will the shortfall or surplus will not yet be finalised?

A: Correct. This process remains the same. If documents are not created and the lodgement verifications has not run, the fees will not be generated and included in the confirmed amount.

Q: Will loan documents received, be automatically updated when Incoming Mortgagee creates a Mortgage?

A: Correct, there is no change to existing functionality. The loan documents received tick box will be selected once the mortgage has been created.

Q: Is the last 4 digits of the account number shown to all participants in the workspace?

A: The last 4 digits of the account will be displayed and seen by all participants.

Q: On 12 October, will all work in progress in SA workspaces have the Enhanced Settlement Summary (ESS) feature?

From the 12 of October new workspaces in SA will be using the new ESS.

• Inflight workspaces settling on or after 26 October will also be transitioned to the ESS.
• Inflight workspaces settling between 12 Oct and 26 Oct will remain on the current
• view.

Q: If there is a shortfall for MOT, will this also be actioned in the same way that surplus is?                                                                                                  

A: If there is a Vendor shortfall i.e. purchase price is less than loan pay out, the ESS calculations will highlight a shortfall.