Overview
This document includes an overview of the Agreement Express (AEX) ScanX Scorecard.
This guide was designed to assist in navigating the ScanX Scorecard and share insight into the tools available and how to utilize them. Flags, Scoring Rules, and an Interaction Action Menu are are all features that will assist your underwriting team to determine if the merchant is credible and should be onboarded.
To get to a scorecard click on the open icon when you hover your mouse over the AEX ID in your workspace.
Table of Contents
1. Risk Scorecard View
Upon opening and AEX ScanX Scorecard, the “Overall Score and Status“ will be the first page displayed, highlighting essential information for quick assessments.
The Overall Score and a Recommended Decision are provided on the right-hand side.
At the top of the page lays a Stepper Bar that allows Underwriters to navigate to different pages containing categorized Scoring Rules.
1.1 The Stepper Bar
The Stepper Bar allows you to navigate between your Scorecard pages. It also provides an indicator for the worst-case active flag on each page.
1.2 Overall Score & Status Page
Underwriter Name & Decision Fields
These fields appear at the top of page one once the scorecard has been assigned and actioned. These let the viewer know who it was that worked on the scorecard and what their final decision was on whether to approve, decline, or pend the merchant. (How to do that will be covered below)
Overall Score
The Overall Score is displayed in the Summary Section of the Overall Score & Status Page. The Overall Score will always be between 0-100, and is calculated by using a series of Page Weights, Scoring Rule Weights, and Scoring Rule Settings. These settings can be adjusted by your Risk Scorecard Company Administrator. AEX recommends getting approval from your Head of Risk Underwriting/Compliance before adjusting any of these settings.
Scorecard System Status
The Scorecard System Status provides a Recommended Decision for the Underwriter. There are two System Recommendation Status:
- Recommend Approve (scores 50-100)
- Recommend Decline (scores 0-49)
By default the system will Recommend Approve for any score 50 or higher and Recommend Decline for any score below 50. These cutoffs can be configured by your company admin.
It is up to the Underwriter to make a manual decision to approve or decline, regardless of the recommendation.
Risk Flag Summary
The Overall Score and Status page contains a Risk Flag Summary section containing all active flags throughout the Scorecard. The Underwriter could leverage the summary section by reviewing and resolving the active flags here or navigating to the Scoring Rules respected page and resolving there.
2. Scorecard Risk Flags
Scorecard Risk Flags can be configured for most scoring rules by editing the Rule Thresholds or Lookup Tables.
2.1 Review Flag
Review Flags highlight specific rules that the Underwriter will need to investigate due to potential risk. A Review Flag may be triggered based on the data provided - returning a negative response, bad data, missing data, or even an issue connecting with the integrated service.
An Active Review Flag will prevent the Automated decisioning mechanism (auto-approve) and will require the Underwriter to resolve before a decision can be made.
2.2 Decline Flag
Decline Flags also highlight specific rules that the Underwriter will need to investigate, but indicate a higher potential risk. A Decline Flag may be triggered based on multiple instances of bad data, extreme levels of certain rules, or even further issues connecting with the integrated service.
An Active Decline Flag will prevent the Automated decisioning mechanism (auto-approve) AND will change the Recommended Decision to be Decline regardless of the score. Therefor even if the score has a score of 90, as long as a Decline Flag is present, the System Decision will be Recommend Decline.
2.3 Prohibited Flag
Prohibited Flags force decline the scorecard without any action by the Underwriter. A Prohibited Flag is not enabled by default on any scoring rules due to the severity of instantly declining a merchant. This is mainly used if there are certain rules such as MCC Code where you know with absolute certainty that you will never do business with this type of merchant
One IMPORTANT thing to know is the potential ripple effect turning this flag on can cause. If you have an AEX Negative File scoring rule set up, whoever applies and gets shut down will now be prevented from applying again as that merchant will be placed on that list upon Decline Decision (regardless of if automatically or manually triggered)
3. Merchant Details Page
The Merchant Details Page provides a summary of all relevant merchant data collected and used to run the Scorecard.
4. Scoring Page(s)
Scoring Pages are all the pages following “Merchant Details.” They allow you to review all of the risk flags for a certain grouping of scoring rules. Scoring Pages can be grouped to reflect the preferences of your risk team. We recommend at least the following page breakdown:
- Owner & Business ID
- Business Risk
- Processing Profile Risk
- Financial Risk
4.1 Scoring Page Risk Summary
The Scoring Page Risk Summary includes a count of the active flags on the page, the overall page score and status, and a list of the flagged rules in the summary. In this example, there is no Page Score because it is a ‘Flag Only’ (unweighted) Scoring Page.
Each page has a potential score out of 100. And each page has a weight applied to it that impacts its contribution to the Overall Score. Contact your company admin to find out how much weight has been assigned to each page. (By default every page has an even distribution)
4.2 Scoring Rules
Scoring Page Rules are listed below the Summary. All scoring rules are available for review, regardless of if there is an Active Flag, or not. There are 4 main types of scoring rules.
- Integrations
- Lookups
- Thresholds
- Reports
Each scoring rule has it’s own weight applied to it and all the rules on one page must add up to a weight of 100. This is configured on the back end by the company admin (By default every rule has an even distribution per page)
View Details
If you click on ‘View Details’, you will be able to see additional information about a specific Scoring Rule.
Input and Output Data
In the View Details expanded scoring rule card available on many scoring rules, you can toggle between the Input Fields and Output Fields, to view the data sent to and received back from the third party web service.
Input
Input fields for Scoring Rules will vary but are required parameters that allow for the rule to run.
Output
Output fields are the responses collected or returned in order for a Score to be provided.
Rerun Web Services
If there was an error with the integration or the merchant provided data, you can edit the data in the Input Fields view, and then Rerun the scoring rule. Updating the data in the input fields will also update the Merchant Details page (page 2).
There is often a cost associated with rerunning scoring rules (refer to your AEx Sales Order). In order to rerun an integration you must be a member of the Underwriting Department in your company - speak to your company administrator who is able to manage teams.
After rerunning an integration there is a chance that your overall score will increase if the rule you are updating had page weight associated with it.
5. Scorecard Action Menu
The Action Menu is the primary hub for taking actions on a Scorecard. You will always have access to the Action Menu by clicking the floating icon on the right side of your screen.
5.1 Action Menu: Scorecard Overview
This is the page you will use to make your final decision on the scorecard. You can Approve, Decline, Pend, or Cancel the scorecard. Only people added to the Underwriting Team have an ability to edit and action scorecards. If you are not part of that team, you can only view scorecards.
- Pending is used if you are unsure what decision you want to make yet, but want to update the status to show progress is being made.
- Cancel is used if you don’t want to decline the merchant, but you want to get rid of the scorecard.
- Decline is used to make the scorecard decision final and choose to not board the merchant.
- Approve is used to make the scorecard decision final as well and indicates this merchant is ready for boarding.
Once you choose to approve, decline, or cancel, that decision is final and the scorecard will lock down, meaning you can’t modify any of the data, rerun any scoring rules, or make further changes. You will still be able to open the scorecard however and see everything in a greyed out view.
5.2 Action Menu: Risk Flag Resolution
In the Flags tab of the Action Menu, the underwriter is able to resolve active risk flags. Resolving a flag will not impact the overall score, but it will remove that flagged item from the active flag summaries on the Overall Page and the Scoring Page. The color of resolved risk flags will be updated to GREEN, but you will still be able to identify the original flag type for audit purposes.
Resolving Active Flags
You can resolve active flags by selecting ‘Resolve’ in the dropdown for that particular flag card in the action menu. NOTE: do not resolve flags until all integrations have finished running as some may drop off once an integration completes.
After clicking CONFIRM, you will receive a confirmation prompt, which includes a list of all rules you are about to resolve:
After resolving flags, the Scoring Rules will be updated to a new GREEN flag indicator with a yellow or red dot in the middle corresponding to what flag color it was beforehand.
5.3 Action Menu: Attachments
You can access attachments, in the third tab of the Action Menu. Attachments can include collateral returned by third party web services, such as the KYC Sitescan PDF Report. But it also will contain any documents sent to the scorecard by AEX’s front end landing page/signing documents. As well as any attachments sent via the correspondence feature (see below) If needed, you can upload additional attachments that weren't automatically brought over by clicking on the upload button.
5.4 Action Menu: Integration Monitor
The Integration Monitor can be used to track the completion status of third party web service integrations. If you open a Scorecard and the integrations are not yet completed, you will not be able to make a decision and you will see an indicator that there are still integrations running.
In this scenario, you can begin reviewing the merchant details until the integrations are completed and the Scorecard Flags/Scores automatically refresh.
If there is an error you will see a message at the bottom of your screen saying "Integration Error. Expand to view details" You also will see a red dot next to the integration in the action menu. Normal causes for this are credential issues or not proper data sent over for that scoring rule. Contact AEx immediately and they will help resolve the issue.
5.5 Action Menu: Audit Logs
This feature provides you ability to track actions performed by an underwriter when reviewing and decisioning a Scorecard in Agreement Express. To access the ScanX Audit Log, open the ScanX Action Menu and click on the Audit Log icon:
The ScanX Audit Log will open in a new drawer at the bottom of the Scorecard:
The following events are logged in the ScanX Audit Log:
- Scorecard Saved
- Scorecard Viewed
- Flag Resolved
- Scorecard Decisions
- Scoring Rule Rerun
- Scorecard Recalculated
- Field Data Changed by Underwriter (Including Before/After Value)
This information can be downloaded using the down arrow in the top right corner if needed. This data helps track which underwriters are doing which tasks, as well as if someone is approving or declining merchants they shouldn’t be.
6. Correspondence Email
AEX has a built in correspondence feature to help an underwriter reach out to a merchant in a secure way to collect additional details they need to properly make their risk decision. This is often used to help get information such as additional documents like a drivers license, or recollect info such as an SSN if a scoring rule came back saying it didn’t match.
After selecting the “Comments” option, the user will be presented with the option of either leaving a Comment or a Correspondence message. The Correspondence messages includes notifying the email address and BCC that the message is being sent to.
The email address entered in the correspondence ‘TO’ field will receive an email directing the user to a page informing them that information and/or documents are being requested. These documents will go into the attachments tab in the Action Menu.
7. Comments
When you make a decision to approve, pend, cancel, or decline a Scorecard, it is recommended that you use the Comments functionality to explain your decision. The comments are available for audit and compliance purposes, and log the date and author of each entry. You are able to download these as a csv.