Example: mortgage pre-approval

This example follows one case type from the builder’s board to a closed case. A bank, Example Bank, pre-approves mortgage loans. People take the application and review it, agents read the payslips and write the offer, a rule checks the loan against the bank’s limits, and a committee votes on large loans.

Every picture was taken in a demo project, with made-up names and figures. The example uses most of what Keel offers in one case type, so you can see how the parts work together. Each part has its own page for the details: the links lead to them.

What the case type does

A person at the bank takes a mortgage application: the applicant, the loan amount, the term in years and the documents. Then:

1. An agent, the Payslip reader, reads the payslips and works out the applicant’s income. If something does not add up, it asks a person.
2. A rule checks two limits: the debt service and the loan against the property’s value.
3. An underwriter reviews the case. Above 200,000 EUR, an agent drafts a credit memo, the underwriter finishes it, and a credit committee of two people votes.
4. An agent, the Offer agent, writes the offer to the client. A declined case gets a decline letter instead.

The board

In Keel Builder, the Workflow tab of the case type shows the whole path. The four primary stages run left to right: Intake, Assessment, Underwriting and Offer. Each stage has a service level, such as SLA 3 business days. Declined is an alternate stage: a case only gets there when an outcome sends it there.

The Workflow tab of Mortgage pre-approval: four stages with their steps, and Declined as an alternate stage

Each card is a step. The icon and the line under the name say who does it.

Stage	Step	Kind	Done by
Intake	Take the application	Person	The Intake queue
Intake	File in the DMS	System	Another system, through a connection called dms
Assessment	Extract the figures	Agent	The Payslip reader
Assessment	Check affordability	Rule	A decision table, Debt service and loan to value
Underwriting	Underwriting review	Person	The Underwriting queue
Underwriting	Committee needed?	Decision	Nobody: Keel picks a branch from the loan amount
Underwriting	Prepare the credit memo	Agent with a person	The Underwriting agent drafts, a person from the Underwriting queue finishes
Underwriting	Credit committee	Vote	The Committee queue: 2 of 2 votes decide
Offer	Issue the offer	Agent	The Offer agent
Offer	Validate in the DMS and Note in the DMS	System	Another system
Declined	Send the decline letter	Agent	The Offer agent

The two System steps that file the case in a document system are an example of how Keel calls another system. A project that has no such system leaves them out.

The steps, one by one

Press a card and its panel opens on the right. The panel has four tabs: Who, Fields, Outcomes and Rules. See Steps for every setting.

A person step. Take the application goes to the Intake queue: whoever works that queue claims it. Outcomes has one, Application taken, which leads to the next step, File in the DMS.

The Outcomes tab of a person step: one outcome, Application taken, leading to the next step

An agent step. Extract the figures is done by the Payslip reader. Raised hands go to names the queue that gets the agent’s questions: Intake. The agent never decides what happens next: it returns one of the outcomes the step offers, or it asks a person.

The Who tab of an agent step: Done by an agent, the Payslip reader, and Raised hands go to Intake

A rule step. Check affordability runs a decision table and writes its two results into two yes-or-no fields, Loan to value within limit and Debt service within limit. The same inputs always give the same answer, and the case’s history records which version of the rule decided.

The Check affordability step: the rule it runs, the fields it writes, and where the case goes next

The decision table lives on the Rules page, with its versions.

The Rules page: the decision table Debt service and loan to value, its hit policy, outputs and rows

A decision. Committee needed? has a condition on the loan amount. Above 200,000 EUR the case goes to the credit memo; otherwise it goes to the offer.

The decision step: a branch for amounts above 200,000 EUR and an Otherwise branch

An agent with a person. Prepare the credit memo is drafted by the Underwriting agent, and a person from the Underwriting queue checks the draft, changes it if needed and submits it. This is the way to use an agent where a person must stay responsible.

The Who tab of an agent with a person step: the agent, the queue for raised hands and the queue that finishes the step

A vote. Credit committee is decided by two of two votes of the Committee queue’s members. Its Rules tab adds two safeguards. Maker-checker says someone other than whoever did Underwriting review or Prepare the credit memo must vote. Authority compares the Loan amount with each voter’s limit in the scope committee.

The Rules tab of the vote step: maker-checker names the two earlier steps, and the authority check uses the loan amount in the committee scope

The data

The Data tab lists the case type’s fields, and for each one which steps read it and which step writes it. A form is made from the fields a step writes. The Forms tab lays out the form a case starts with.

The Data tab: each field with its type, whether it is required, personal data, who reads it and which step writes it

The people and their limits

Builders define the queues: Intake, Underwriting and Committee, each with a serving order and a priority. A queue only says how work is served. The project’s supervisors decide who works each queue, on the Team page of the business app.

The Queues page: the queue Committee, its serving order and priority, and the project's supervisors

On Team, a supervisor also sets each person’s authority limits: the most a person may approve in each scope. In this project, the underwriter may approve up to 1,000,000 in the Underwriting scope. The two committee members have limits of 300,000 and 200,000 in the Committee scope.

The Team page, Staff tab: each person's queues and authority limits

See Queues and The Team page.

A case from start to end

The case below is a loan of 240,000 EUR for 25 years. It is above 200,000 EUR, so it goes to the committee.

The closed case: the stage bar, the loan amount and term, the case's files and its data

1. Intake. A staff member takes the application: the applicant, the amount, the term, and the documents: three payslips, an identity document and a property valuation. These appear as the case’s files.
2. Assessment. The Payslip reader reads the payslips and writes the employer, the net monthly income and the existing monthly debt payments. The rule checks the limits and answers yes to both.
3. Underwriting. An underwriter reviews the case and writes a note. The amount is above 200,000 EUR, so the Underwriting agent drafts a credit memo as a document, and the underwriter finishes it. Two members of the committee vote, and neither is the underwriter who reviewed the case.
4. Offer. The Offer agent writes the offer. It stops and asks a person to confirm that the committee approved it, because the policy requires that for loans above the underwriter’s limit. A staff member answers, and the agent finishes.

The case’s History records each step: who did it, when, and the outcome. For a step an agent drafted, it says so.

The History tab: the offer issued, the committee's approval, the credit memo, the underwriting review, the figures extracted and the application taken

When an agent asks

In another case, the Payslip reader found two problems: the name on the payslips was not the applicant’s, and a third payslip was missing. It could not go on, so it raised a hand: it asked the Intake queue. The question shows in the work of whoever can answer, with the evidence the agent found. The agent waits, with no time limit, until a person answers.

An agent's question in Work: the question, which agent asked, and the case it is about

See Working with agents.

What the builder sees afterwards

After a few cases, Overview in Keel Builder shows how the case type holds up: how often agents needed a person, who did the steps and which stages are slowest.

The Overview page of Keel Builder: published case types, running cases, open drafts, steps done by agents and charts

The Agents page keeps every session of an agent. A session shows what the agent read, the question it asked and the answer it was given, with its time and cost.

A finished session of the Offer agent: its question to a person, the answer it was given, its time, its cost and its outcome

Build it yourself

1. Create the case type with the fields above, as the quickstart for builders shows.
2. Add the stages and steps on the Workflow tab. Give each step its kind in Steps.
3. Make the decision table on the Rules page.
4. Define the queues on the Queues page, and the agents in Studio. Pick each agent in its step.
5. Write scenarios for the paths: a small loan, a large loan, a declined loan. Every dry run plays them.
6. Publish, then ask a supervisor to add people to the queues and set their limits.

Or describe the process to the designer agent and let it draft the first version, which you then check and change in the draft.