Understanding Scorecard: A Quick Guide

Overview

This document provides an overview of the Scorecard.

It is designed to help users navigate the Scorecard and understand the key tools available, including Flags, Scoring Rules, and the Interaction Action Menu. These features support underwriting teams in evaluating merchant credibility and making informed onboarding decisions.

Table of Contents

Upon opening the Scorecard, the “Overall Score and Status” page is displayed first, providing a high-level summary for quick assessments.

At the top of the page, a Stepper Bar allows underwriters to navigate between different sections, each containing categorized Scoring Rules.

The Stepper Bar allows you to navigate between Scorecard pages and also displays an indicator for the most severe active flag on each page.

Underwriter Name & Decision

These fields appear at the top of the first page once the Scorecard has been actioned. They indicate who completed the Scorecard and the final decision—whether to approve, decline, or pend the merchant.

Overall Score

The Overall Score ranges from 0 to 100 and is calculated using a combination of Page Weights, Scoring Rule Weights, and Scoring Rule Settings.

These settings are customizable and can be adjusted to best align with your organization’s risk model or business needs. However, it is recommended to obtain approval from your Head of Risk Underwriting or Compliance before making any changes.

System Recommendation

The System Decision is intended to assist the Underwriter and will be one of two options: Recommend Approve or Recommend Decline.

By default, the system recommends Approve for scores of 50 or above, and Decline for scores below 50. These thresholds are customizable.

Ultimately, the Underwriter is responsible for making the final manual decision, regardless of the system’s recommendation.

Risk Flag Summary

The Risk Flag Summary section displays all active flags across the Scorecard in one centralized location for convenience and efficiency.

Underwriters can review and address these flags directly within this section. Alternatively, they can navigate to the corresponding Scoring Rules pages if preferred.

Follow this link to read more about the Scorecard Risk Flags

2. Merchant Details Page

The Merchant Details page provides a summary of all relevant merchant data that is used to run the Scorecard checks.

3. Scoring Page(s)

Scoring Pages are the pages that follow the Merchant Details page. Each page allows you to review risk flags related to a specific group of scoring rules.

Scoring Pages can be organized to reflect the preferences of your risk team. We recommend the following page breakdown as a baseline:

• Owner & Business ID
• Business Risk
• Processing Profile Risk
• Financial Risk

Summary

The Summary section includes the number of active flags on the page, the page score and status, and a list of the flagged rules.

Each Scoring Page has a potential score out of 100 and a weight that determines its impact on the Overall Score.

In the example shown, there is no Page Score because this is a Flag Only (unweighted) Scoring Page.

Hover over the page score in your console to view the weight assigned to that page. By default, all pages are evenly weighted. 

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.