Decision Engine

What is LendAPI’s Decision Engine?

LendAPI’s Decision Engine is with our risk management and risk product management professionals in mind. It is a no-code rules engine and a rules studio in one. You can design any number of rules and bring application data and third party data to life with a visual rules studio editor.

LendAPI’s Decision Engine Key Design Features

You can locate the Decision Engine design studio by following the instructions below. And don’t forget to sign up at app.lendapi.com/signup to experience the LendAPI Decision Engine rules studio yourself.

Getting to the Decision Engine and Rules Builder:Getting to the Decision Engine and Rules Builder:

1. Click onto Workflow on the left navigation bar

2. Click onto Decision Trees

3. Click onto the Edit icon

LendAPI Decision Engine Main Panel

1. Visual Decision Tree View: This section of the decision rules studios shows the visual representation of the decision tree. All of the beginning node of a tree, if-the-else logic that bifurcates each branch into their own directions. In this example, we designed a simple tree that checks a particular score.

2. Decision Rule Editor: The rules editor lets you select the variable in question and provide you with all of the mathematical operators such as “>=” or greater than or equal. The rules editor also provides the value which you would enter to balance the rule. In this example. The rule says if the score is greater than or equal to 500, then the tree will split into two branches.

3. Child Node Management: Each tree will have two branches and each branch is considered a child node. A branch could be a rule or an action (an end of a branch outcome)

LendAPI Decision Engine Node Outcome Control

1. Node Action: At the end of each branch, an action must be taken. These actions can be Approved/Decline/Review… In fact, you can add these outcomes in the Decision Engine outcome editor. These outcomes will drive a customer communication event such as a congratulatory email.

2. Node Outcome: An node outcome is the connection between the Credit Decision Engines and Product Decision Engine. If the Node Action is Approved, the outcome will carry on and integrate your product configuration in the Product Decision Engine. Information such as Term of the loan, APR and amount of the loan will be triggered by the Node Outcome

3. Connecting to another decision tree: Sometimes your decision trees can get massive and we created a way for the branches to grow into another decision tree. In essence you can link multiple trees together by connecting another tree at the end node of another tree.

LendAPI Decision Engine Tree Management

1. Tree Versioning: One of the most important aspects of managing decision engines and decision trees is versioning. Fundamentally, each application is run through the latest version of the decision tree. We understand that rules change from time to time and new versions of the trees need to be published. However, we must preserve the relationship of the older applications with the previous version of the rulesets. The tree versioning does just that, it keeps track of all of the previous app-to-rule relationships and lets the rule engineers save their edits to a new version.

2. Tree Tester: While rule editors are designing their tree, they need a method to quickly test the result of their trees. We implemented a tree tester for rule engineers to enter value of each variable and run the entire tree to render a node action and outcome to validate their work

3. Tree Publication: The publish button is where the rules engineer can promote their rules from edit mode to production mode. As soon as the rule is published, the very next application coming through your digital onboarding flow will be using the new rule. 

LendAPI Decision Engine summary:

The LendAPI Decision Engine is not meant to exist in its own silo. It’s connected to the LendAPI Product Builder as well as the Workflow Orchestration platform. These three components work in concert to manage your customer facing application, resolve any issues and move the application along and guide the customer to complete their application with various decision trees.
To experience the rule engine fully, you can register at app.lendapi.com/signup for a 30 day free trial.