About Minor Applicants

A minor applicant is an applicant who is below 18 years of age and above the minimum age set by your institution. You can set the minimum age via the Admin Platform, under Configurations > Institution Settings > Minimum Applicant Age (the default is 13). When applying, if the applicant's birth date is not eligible, an error appears and they will not be able to continue.

Your institution has 3 options for handling minor applicants:

• Restrict all minors from applying – Set the minimum applicant age to 18 using the institution setting mentioned above.
• Require all minor applicants to have a parent or guardian as a joint applicant – To do this, in the Admin Platform, go to Configurations > Institution Settings and set Require Joint Applications for Minor Applicants to true. Once set up, if a primary applicant is detected as a minor from the date of birth entered on the application, and the application does not have a joint applicant who is non-minor, the following message appears: “In order to proceed, please add a parent/guardian to this application.” If the application has a joint who is a non-minor, they can proceed with the application. In addition, we recommend your institution set up custom Alloy workflows to handle joint minor applicants, for example, using a"Minor" tag to automatically send applications to manual review. 
  
• Allow all minors to apply independently – If your institution does not want to require minor applicants to have a parent or guardian as a joint applicant, we recommend your institution set up custom Alloy workflows to have all applications for minors go through manual review, then have a staff member decision each application. In Alloy, a "Minor" tag can be created for all minor applicants or you can restrict minors to applying to only certain account types. For example, a workflow could be set up to approve applications with the "Minor" tag as long as it includes certain account types; otherwise, deny the application (or move to manual review).
  
  

If your institution requires custom workflows to handle minor applicants, Narmi and Alloy work together with your institution to set up these workflows during the implementation process. For more information, go to Alloy - Manual Reviews & Evaluations or contact your Narmi Relationship Manager.