Release Notes on January 17, 2024 – Happy Mango

This release includes the first part in a series of important upgrades related to loan payment processing and management functions. Additional upgrades will be included in the next two releases. In this release, we changed the loan payment management, calculation, and presentation to improve the transparency and the flexibility of the payment functions. We also expanded the use of Textract and added EAD (Employment Authorization Card) to the list of readable ID documents.

Consumer and Small Business User Portal

Expanded Access for Adding Funding Sources

Payment functions are attractive targets for potential hackers. Happy Mango has implemented a number of constraints and checks to ensure our payment process is accessible to only legitimate users who have the need to access the payment functions. One of the constraints is that the "Add Payment Source" function is available only to users who have been approved for a loan or have an active loan in place. In this release, we refined this constraint to allow users whose applications have not yet been approved to access the "Add Payment Source" function as long as their submitted applications have been verified by a third party on Happy Mango. This refinement allows loan applicants more time to add and verify their payment account without compromising on risk control.

Added EAD to Readable Uploaded IDs in Step 2 of Application

In addition to US passports and driver's licenses, US issued Employment Authorization Card (EAD) can now be uploaded as a readable ID in Step 2 of the application. We plan to continue to expand the use of OCR technology in future release by applying this technology to more types of document.

Institutional User Portal

Changed the Definition of Payment Date in Loan Payment Calculation

Standard ACH takes up 5 business days to complete. Since we will not know whether the ACH payment is successful until the end of this process, we have defined the Payment Date as the date when funds are received. This method has a couple of issues. First, we had to manually adjust the payment status when a payment is initiated within the grace period but received after the grace period. Even though borrowers have made the payments on time, the payments would be considered late. To avoid recording such payments as late payments, we had to manually adjust the payment schedule. Another problem with this method is that for loans with daily interest accrue, the interest on the loan continues to accrue during the payment settlement period even though the funds are no longer in the borrower's account to earn interest. From the borrower's perspective, this is not fair as they are being charged for interest on the loan while already bearing the opportunity cost of not being able to earn interest on their funds.

In an effort to improve the fairness in the loan calculation and eliminate manual adjustments, we have changed the Payment Date of loan payments from the date when the payment is received to the date when the payment is initiated. This required significant adjustments to our loan calculation algorithm. On the "Payments Made" tab on the Current Payment Schedule, you will note when this switch took place as payments recorded under the new method are labeled "Payment Made" while payments recorded under the old method are labeled "Payment Received."

New Tabs and Organization on the Loan Payment Schedule Page

Clicking on the hyperlinked Loan Number anywhere on the portal takes you to the Loan Payment Schedule page for that loan. We have reorganized the data presentation and added new information on the Loan Payment Schedule Page to improve clarity. This page now includes several tabs presenting contractual and actual payments in a complete picture: Current Schedule, Original Schedule, Payments Made, ACH Payments, and Modification Log.

See related article: Loan Management: An Overview of the Loan Payment Schedule Page

New "Reset Schedule" Button for All Functions for Changing Loan Payment Schedule

We consolidated all functions related to changing the contractual payments schedule into one place-- the new "Reset Schedule" button. Clicking on this button opens up a window with the following functions:

Skip Next Payment delays the coming payment due by one payment cycle.
Postpone Due Date extends the payment due date within the current payment cycle.
Modify Loan Schedule is used for all other changes to the loan schedule

New Modification Log to Track All Changes Made to Payment Schedule

All modifications made to a loan's payment schedule are displayed in detail chronologically on the newly created "Modification Log" tab. In addition, a summary of all the changes to the loan schedule made to date is shown on the Loan Payment Schedule page.

Modification Log.png

Updated the "Update Status" Button for Changing Loan Status

The old "Transfer" button has been replaced with "Update Status". While the UI looks largely unchanged, the calculation for changing an Active loan to "Charged-Off" or "Paid-Off" has been updated.

See related articles:
Loan Management: How does a loan get paid off?

Loan Management: How does a loan get charged off?