There’s no doubt this Government Shutdown will likely have negative consequences on some of your customers. Missing a few paychecks would be hard on any of us.
Now is a good time to review your policies and train your employees how to best handle missed payments due to the Government Shutdown. We have a few suggestions that may help.
ONE:
First, review your policies on deferments with your employees. Deferments are institution-defined but usually allow borrowers to forego making a payment, or making a reduced payment for the current loan frequency, without incurring any late charges or negative delinquencies on their account.
When employees attempt to solicit borrowers in making their payments, remind them of deferment options offered by your institution. Some institutions offer hardship deferments, which are usually reserved for natural disasters. If your institution would like to be able to offer hardship deferments, contact your GOLDPoint Systems account manager to have EZPay options turned on. You can determine how many hardship deferments are allowed per year per account.
Other institutions require a borrower to only pay the interest for the month as part of the deferment charge, causing the Due Date to advance and keeping the account current (or making it more current).
If you need more guidance on what deferments we currently offer on our system, or for information on running deferments, see these topics in DocsOnWeb:
· Deferment Transactions in CIM GOLDTeller
See the EZPay screen below displaying a Hardship Deferment option:
Loans > Transactions > EZPay Screen
TWO:
It’s a good idea to track and record collection efforts if the borrower has missed payments due to their Federal Government job. That information could be helpful in advertising to those individuals later with zero-to-low-interest promotions.
To track collection efforts will take some easy set up in CIM GOLD.
1. Define your Collection Comment Code using the Loans > System Setup Screens > Collection Comment Codes screen. Create the new code, such as “GSD” for “Government Shutdown.” Make sure to check the Report Employee Performance box, as shown below.
Loans > System Setup Screens > Collection Comment Codes Screen
Loans > System Setup Screens > Client Code Setup > Collection Comment Codes Screen
3. Instruct all employees and collectors that during the course of the day, if the customer says they are not able to make their payment due to the Government Shutdown, select the new “GSD” code in the Collection Comment list on the Contact tab of the Marketing and Collections screen, as shown below.
Loans > Marketing and Collections Screen > Contact Tab
4. Suggest to the employees and collectors to offer deferments for the month if the customer is eligible for deferments, then process the deferment transaction accordingly by clicking the <EZPay> button at the bottom of the Contact tab and running the deferment from the EZPay pop-up screen.
5. You can track the employee performance using the Loans > Statistics and Summaries > Employee Performance screen. The User Comment row shows where the employee used user-defined Comment Codes (see below).
Loans > Statistics and Summaries > Employee Performance Screen
THREE:
You can add the Collection Comment Codes to a GOLDMiner or GOLDWriter report using the F2QH record (Collection History Record). Contact your GOLDPoint Systems account manager if you need help creating a report listing all accounts where the new Comment Code was applied.
Then from that report, you can create a special letter to send to those account owners concerning special financing available, should you choose to do so.