Payment plan overrides

An insurer may want a payment plan to behave one way for most billing instructions, but a different way for a specific type of billing instruction. The most common example of this is modifying how charges are sliced at renewal. For example, an insurer may want a given payment plan to have a down payment and 6 installments when the policy is issued, but 6 installments only with no down payment when the policy is renewed. This approach, where the down payment is not used for renewals, is referred to as continuous billing. BillingCenter supports this with payment plan overrides. A payment plan override is a set of one or more values on a payment plan that overrides the normal values when the charges are on a specific type of billing instruction.

For a complete description of the business functionality of payment plan overrides, see the Application Guide.

Querying for payment plan overrides

Use the following endpoints to query for payment plan overrides on a given plan:

  • GET /admin/v1/payment-plans/{paymentPlanId}/overrides
  • GET /admin/v1/payment-plans/{paymentPlanId}/overrides/{paymentPlanOverrideId}
For example, the following GETs the payment plan overrides for payment plan bc:32. There is one payment plan override, which specifies no down payment for renewal billing instructions.
GET /admin/v1/payment-plans/bc:32/overrides
{
    "count": 1,
    "data": [
        {
            "attributes": {
                "billingInstructionType": {
                    "code": "Renewal",
                    "name": "Renewal"
                },
                "downPaymentSecondInstallment": {
                    "code": "none",
                    "name": "None"
                },
                "id": "bc:S1Cn5rNhJXRu3VKic7lmj"
            },
            ...

Creating payment plan overrides

Use the following endpoint to create a new payment plan override for a given payment plan:

  • POST /admin/v1/payment-plans/{paymentPlanId}/overrides

You can add payment plan overrides only to payment plans that are not in use.

There is only one field required for a payment plan override: billingInstructionType. It must be set to one of the following values from the BillingInstruction typelist. (There are additional values in this typelist, but the only ones valid for payment plan overrides are the ones listed below.)

  • Audit
  • Cancellation
  • General
  • NewRenewal
  • PolicyChange
  • Issuance
  • PremiumReportBI
  • Reinstatement
  • Renewal
  • Rewrite

There are no other fields required for a payment plan override. However, if you do not specify any other fields, then you have a payment plan override that does not override anything.

The following request creates a payment plan override for payment plan bc:707. It specifies that renewals do not have a down payment. (This would be appropriate for a payment plan that specifies down payments for newly issued policies.)

POST /admin/v1/payment-plans/bc:707/overrides

{
  "data": {
    "attributes": {
      "billingInstructionType": {
        "code": "Renewal"
      },
      "downPaymentSecondInstallment": {
        "code": "none"
      }
    }
  }
}

PATCHing payment plan overrides

Use the following endpoint to PATCH an existing payment plan override:

  • PATCH /admin/v1/payment-plans/{paymentPlanId}/overrides/{paymentPlanOverrideId}

You cannot PATCH a payment plan override's billingInstructionType. The only way to accomplish this logically is to delete the payment plan override and POST a new one with the desired billingInstructionType.

When a payment plan is assigned to at least one policy, BillingCenter considers the plan to be in use.

When a plan is not in use:

  • Its inUse field is set to false.
  • The entire plan can be modified.

When a plan is in use:

  • Its inUse field is set to true.
  • Through Cloud API, the payment plan override cannot be modified.
For example, suppose payment plan bc:707 has a payment plan override that specifies the down payment percent is 9%. You want to PATCH the override so that the down payment percent is 6%. The following request updates this payment plan override in this way (assuming it is not in use).
PATCH /admin/v1/payment-plans/bc:707/overrides/bc:009

{
  "data": {
    "attributes": {
      "downPaymentPercent": "6.00"
    }
  }
}

DELETEing payment plan overrides

Use the following endpoint to DELETE an existing payment plan override:

  • DELETE /admin/v1/payment-plans/{paymentPlanId}/overrides/{paymentPlanOverrideId}

When a payment plan is assigned to at least one policy, BillingCenter considers the plan to be in use. When a plan is in use, it cannot be deleted.

For example, the following DELETEs payment plan override bc:009 (assuming that it is not in use).
DELETE /admin/v1/delinquency-plans/bc:009

<no request body>