Simulate Underwriting Decision

Warning: The Highnote test environment lets you explore the platform features and functionality. It is intended for experimenting, building integrations, and training your team.

To ensure the security of your real-world data, please do not enter production data in the test environment. Production data includes sensitive information like customer details, financial data, or personally identifiable information (PII).

Use only dummy or test data explicitly created for testing purposes in the test environment.

Highnote provides simulations for credit application underwriting. This is useful for testing your integration and credit policy, configuring notifications, and simulating the cardholder experience.

This guide provides an overview for simulating underwriting decisions using the test environment.

Your credit policy may allow for dynamic allocation of credit limits on approved applications. You can test various credit line assignments on approved applications using the test environment.

Simulating credit line assignment requires two steps:

1. Onboard an account holder and provide a simulation value for the annualRevenue or totalAnnualIncome fields. To onboard an account holder, see Onboard an account holder.

2. Open an application for the account holder. When the application is approved, the credit line will reflect the simulation value used during onboarding. To open an application, see Open an application.

The following table provides simulation values for simulating credit line assignment:

After simulating credit line assignment, you can use the following query to lookup the application to verify the credit line:

In the test environment, opening applications for credit card products allows you to test adverse action reasons for DENIED responses. Testing adverse action reasons consists of the following steps:

1. Create a business or person account holder in your test environment using an adverse action simulation value.
2. Open an application for the account holder.

In the live environment, a DENIED application may have one or more adverse action reasons. All adverse action reasons must be provided to the account holder.

The following table provides adverse action values you can use to simulate application denial:

Note: To automate your integration, you can use the CARD_PRODUCT_APPLICATION_DENIED notification event to send a notification to you or your account holder when an application is denied. For more information, see the Account holder application status notification event reference.

After simulating denial with adverse action reasons, use the following query to find a card product application:

Note: If your credit policy requires credit report inquiries, you must collect additional consent from the account holder during the card product application flow.

If you are not using collaborative application decisioning, your card product's credit policy is executed on your behalf by Highnote.

For credit policies that perform credit report inquiries, you must monitor and manage credit report freezes and fraud alerts for your account holders. Refer to the following to resolve credit report freezes and fraud alerts for your account holders:

• Credit report freezes: The account holder must contact the applicable credit bureau and remove the freeze on their credit report.
• Credit report fraud alerts: You must contact the account holder and verify their identity.

For credit policies that use a credit bureau's risk score, use the following query to view an application's credit creditScoreReasons:

In some scenarios, account holders may have a freeze or fraud alert on their credit report or be flagged for MLA eligibility. Using the test environment, you can simulate a credit report freeze, fraud alert, or MLA flag on an application response. Simulating these scenarios requires the following steps:

1. Onboard an account holder and provide a simulation value for the phoneNumber field. To onboard an account holder, see Onboard an account holder.
2. Open an application for the account holder. When the application processes, it will create a fraud alert, credit report freeze, or MLA eligibility flag in the response payload.

The following table provides simulation values for creating an account holder to simulate credit freezes, credit report fraud alerts, and MLA eligibility. The same simulation values apply to both US business and person account holders:

After creating an account holder using the FRAUD_ALERT simulation value, use the following mutation to open an application. The fraud alert is noted in the response payload:

After creating an account holder using the FREEZE simulation value, use the following mutation to open an application. The credit report freeze is noted in the response payload:

After creating an account holder using the MLA_ELIGIBLE simulation value, use the following mutation to open an application. If the applicant is eligible for MLA, a CREDIT_REPORT_FRAUD_ALERT tag will also be present on the application. Once a financial account is issued from the application, you can lookup the military status on the account. The MLA eligibility is noted in the response payload:

If a credit report inquiry returns a CREDIT_REPORT_FRAUD_ALERT, you can use the following query to lookup the application. The response's status and memo fields will include account holder information that you can use to reach out to and verify the identity of the account holder:

If an account holder has a fraud alert on their credit report, you must contact the account holder to verify the following information matches their application:

• Account holder name
• Date of birth
• Address

If the account holder can't verify the information provided on their application, the application will be denied.

Use the following mutation to verify an account holder for a fraud alert:

If the account holder has a freeze on their credit report, you must contact the account holder and instruct them to remove the freeze from their report. Once the account holder has confirmed they removed a freeze, you can use the following mutation to confirm and re-run the application decisioning workflow: