Setup Considerations: Alternative Loan Processing

What It Is

Workday provides integrations and tasks that enable you to process private loans, also known as alternative loans. When you launch an integration or complete a task, Workday automatically updates the status of the alternative loan. These statuses drive processing and determine the actions that you can perform on an alternative loan application.

Set up alternative loan processing to package and disburse alternative loans to students.

Business Benefits

Alternative loan processing makes it easier for you to send and receive alternative loan application information from private banks or third-party loan servicers. You only need to configure 1 award item to represent alternative loans in Workday regardless of different banks or private lenders, saving you time and effort. Workday automatically displays bank or private lender information for each student based on their alternative loan application.

Use Cases

Alternative loan processing enables you to:

Import loan applications from third-party loan servicers into Workday.

Certify alternative loan applications in Workday.

Transmit certification records to third-party loan servicers.

Import response files from third-party loan servicers into Workday.

Import disbursement roster data from third-party loan servicers into Workday.

Disburse alternative loans based on disbursement roster data.

Optionally, you can also:

Make changes or corrections to alternative loan applications in Workday and transmit the transactions to third-party loan servicers.

Manually create response files for alternative loan applications so that you can disburse awards when you don’t receive a response file from third-party loan servicers.

Questions to Consider

Question	Considerations
How do you want alternative loans to reduce the student's unmet need or cost of attendance?	Workday packages alternative loans based on the position of the award item in your packaging strategy. If you don't add your alternative loan award item to a packaging strategy, Workday might reduce a student's unmet need and cost of attendance with an alternative loan before other potentially more desirable awards. Review your packaging strategies and ensure that you add your alternative loan award item on them.
What loan servicer will you communicate alternative loan application information to and from?	With some loan servicers, you need to configure the Alternative Loan Application Send Response Inbound integration template twice to differentiate between initial certification requests, and changes or updates to loan applications you've already certified. Verify how your loan servicer sends response files before configuring your alternative loan integration templates.

Question

Considerations

How do you want alternative loans to reduce the student's unmet need or cost of attendance?

Workday packages alternative loans based on the position of the award item in your packaging strategy.

If you don't add your alternative loan award item to a packaging strategy, Workday might reduce a student's unmet need and cost of attendance with an alternative loan before other potentially more desirable awards.

Review your packaging strategies and ensure that you add your alternative loan award item on them.

What loan servicer will you communicate alternative loan application information to and from?

With some loan servicers, you need to configure the Alternative Loan Application Send Response Inbound
integration template twice to differentiate between initial certification requests, and changes or updates to loan applications you've already certified.

Verify how your loan servicer sends response files before configuring your alternative loan integration templates.

Recommendations

Review the details of students' loan applications thoroughly. Workday uses the information on the loan application to process, package, and disburse of alternative loan awards. Example: Workday uses the

Alternative Loan Certified Amount

and

Disbursement Date

fields to calculate maximum award amounts and anticipated disbursements after certification.

To ensure that alternative loan awards remain consistent with information from loan applications and the loan servicer, don't configure any calculations or disbursement schedules on your alternative loan award item.

To prevent alternative loan awards from disbursing until the alternative loan application meets all of the requirements, configure the

Alternative Loan Requirements

disbursement eligibility condition on the alternative loan award item associated with your alternative loan integrations.

To keep information in Workday in sync with information from the loan servicer, don't make any changes to alternative loans on the

Total Financial Assistance

report or unlock the award.

Requirements

Create a single award item that represents alternative loans by selecting a

Source

of Private
and a

Type

of Loan
. Workday automatically locks these fields for the award item:

Need Method

Package Once

No Rounding

Initial Award Status

Student Allowable Action

Add the alternative loan award item to a packaging strategy.

Configure the alternative loan integration templates.

Limitations

Students must initiate alternative loan applications through a bank or private lender. Workday doesn’t support the manual creation of alternative loan applications.

You can't configure disbursement proration rules for alternative loans. Report and confirm anticipated disbursements with the bank or private lender in advance.

You can't package alternative loans provisionally. Workday uses information from the student's loan application and the loan servicer to determine when to package students with alternative loan awards.

You can only process alternative loans for matriculated students. Workday doesn’t support alternative loan processing for student applicants. However, Workday retains unmatched alternative loan applications, allowing you to find them later to either rematch with students or permanently delete.

You can only process alternative loan applications with U.S. addresses. You can load alternative loan applications with international addresses when you enable the Check for Contact Information Errors
launch parameter on the Alternative Loan Application Send Response Inbound
integration. You can certify alternative loan applications with either U.S. or international addresses.

Tenant Setup

No impact.

Security

In order to process and disburse alternative loans, you must have access to the Manage: Student Loan Application
security domain in the Financial Aid functional area.

In order to delete unmatched alternative loans, you must have access to the Manage: Delete Student Loan Applications
security domain in the Financial Aid functional area.

Business Processes

No impact.

Reporting

You can:

Create custom reports using report fields on the

Student Alternative Loan Application

business object and the

Student Alternative Loan Applications

data source.

Use the

Find Alternative Loan Applications

report to view alternative loan applications. From the report, you can also take action on a loan application through its related actions menu. The actions you can perform on a loan application depends on its

Alternative Loan Status

.

Use the

Find Unmatched Alternative Loan Applications

report to view why Workday didn’t match specific alternative loan applications with students. You can also use the report to run mass actions to either rematch or permanently delete obsolete applications. We recommend that you regularly run the report to keep your data up to date.

View disbursement roster information from the related actions menu of any alternative loan anticipated disbursement.

Verify if a student is on the disbursement roster by accessing the

Disbursement

report on the Financial Aid profile group of the student's profile.

Integrations

Integrations	Considerations
Alternative Loan Application Send Response Inbound	Brings in: Initial certification requests. Loan servicer responses to certified or changed loan applications.
Alternative Loan Application Send Outbound	Sends out certification records for alternative loan applications to a third-party loan servicer.
Alternative Loan Disbursement Roster Inbound	Brings in alternative loan disbursement rosters. Students must be on a disbursement roster in order for them to receive disbursements of their alternative loan award.
Alternative Loan Application Change Send Outbound	Sends out change records to a third-party loan servicer.

To troubleshoot your alternative loan integration events, access the Diagnostic Audit file. The file displays alternative loan applications that didn't load and the errors associated with them.

Web Services	Considerations
Get Student Alternative Loan Applications	Retrieves data about an alternative loan application, or all alternative loan applications if you don't specify which one to retrieve.
Import Student Alternative Loan Applications	Loads alternative loan applications into Workday in bulk.
Import Student Alternative Loan Application Disbursement Roster	Loads an alternative loan application disbursement roster into Workday.
Put Student Alternative Loan Application	Loads or creates a new alternative loan application, or updates an existing alternative loan application in Workday, regardless of its matching status, with the information you specify in the request.

Connections and Touchpoints

Workday offers a Touchpoints Kit with resources to help you understand configuration relationships in your tenant. Learn more about the Workday Touchpoints Kit on Workday Community.