Release Notes 8.005.0

Beginning in the 2019 RY, for crops with a filing date of 11/30 or later, RMA expanded enterprise units to include a Multi-County Enterprise Unit Endorsement (MCEU). This endorsement allows growers to combine acreage of an insured crop in one county with acreage of that same insured crop in another contiguous county. RMA issued a new option code of "MC" used to elect Multi-County Enterprise Units when elected on the coverage in conjunction with the EU or EP unit structure. In addition, there are a number of qualification requirements that must be met at the acreage reporting date in order for the coverage to qualify for MCEU.

With this ticket, the Total MCEU Guarantee data has been updated to print on the Schedule of Insurance (SOI) and SOI / Production Report. Additionally, the same MCEU Section updates have been made on the SOI / Production Report that were done on the SOI in the 8.000 release. The following updates were made:

VFR: As part of the 2018 Farm Bill, beginning in the 2019 Reinsurance Year (RY), RMA has issued procedures for Veteran Farmer Ranchers (VFRs). The VFR program is nearly identical to the Beginning Farmer Rancher (BFR) program, with a few differences. To qualify for VFR, a grower must be a veteran who served in active military, naval, or air services in the Armed Forces and was discharged or released under any condition other than dishonorable. In addition, the grower must meet one of the following criteria:

In order for a policy to qualify for VFR procedures, the grower and all SBIs (Substantial Beneficial Interests) must qualify as VFRs. If any SBI on the policy or the grower do not qualify for VFR, then the policy does not qualify for the use of VFR procedures. When a policy does qualify for VFR procedures, the following benefits apply:

For the 2019 RY only, in order to qualify for VFR benefits, in addition to the requirements listed above, the VFR application must be completed no later than June 1, 2019 or the Acreage Reporting Date (ARD), whichever is later. In addition, for the 2019 RY only, VFR is only applicable to crops with a Sales Closing Date (SCD) after December 20, 2018. For subsequent RYs, in addition to meeting the requirements called out above, in order to qualify for VFR benefits, the VFR application must be completed by the SCD. VFR benefits will not apply to any coverages with a SCD prior to the sign date on the VFR application.

With this ticket, to account for the new VFR program, the existing BFR functionality was updated to include VFR. This included a number of label updates as well as updates to the BFR/VFR Application page and Grower for Policy page. The Grower for Policy page has been cleaned up—the BFR/VFR Certification information and Conservation Compliance information have been moved to their own collapsible banners. This ticket handled the display changes only; all other changes will be addressed with separate TFS ticket. The following updates have been made:

CAT: For the 2020 RY, the administrative fees for CAT coverage will increase from $300 to $655. None of the business rules regarding how CAT fees are applied (e.g., by crop type, varietal group) will change from what's currently established in the System, just the amount of the admin fee assessed will change. This ticket updated all 2020 RY code to replace $300 with $655.

VFR: As part of the 2018 Farm Bill, beginning in the 2019 Reinsurance Year (RY), RMA has issued procedures for Veteran Farmer Ranchers (VFRs). The VFR program is nearly identical to the Beginning Farmer Rancher (BFR) program, with a few differences.

NOTE: For more information on the VFR program and benefits and to see the display changes made to support VFR, see the release note for TFS #101656.

With this ticket, the necessary rating logic was updated, including waived admin fees and additional 10% premium subsidy, to account for VFR procedures. For 2019, the System will waive admin fees and apply the additional 10% premium subsidy if the Certification Date on the Grower for Policy page is on or before the later of June 1, 2019 or the ARD. In addition, the System will only apply these benefits if the SCD is after December 20, 2018. Also as part of this ticket, logic was implemented for the 2020+ RYs that will waive admin fees and apply the additional 10% premium subsidy if the Certification Date on the VFR application is on or before the SCD for the crop. In addition, the December 20th + SCD restriction will no longer apply in the 2020 RY.

Fast Edit: This is a spin-off of TFS #101645 in the 7.115 release where additional navigation enhancements were made to the System. Three new search options were made available with that release: Fast Edit AR, Fast Edit CLU, and Fast Edit PR. Users were also given the ability to navigate between policies for a particular grower and RY by clicking on the arrow to the right of the policy number in the Policy Header of the Fast Edit AR, Fast Edit CLU, and Fast Edit PR pages.

With this ticket, the System was updated to return a browser warning to the user if they attempt to navigate away from the Fast Edit AR, Fast Edit CLU, or Fast Edit PR pages if there are unsaved changes. The format of the warning varies based on the selected browser (e.g., Chrome, IE, Firefox) but fall within the warning messages that are standard for that browser platform.

Although agent users are familiar with the Fast Edit AR grid and the modified state that was implemented with the functionality a couple of years ago, this browser message offers up one additional warning for them to save changes before navigating to the next policy. It is expected that most users already understand that save is required as they navigate through the Fast Edit entry to the final Save & Exit on the Signature Maintenance page.

MCEU: During internal testing, a bug was identified with MCEU functionality. When MCEU applies, the System sums and stores the total acres value for each MCEU for use in the premium calculation. The bug found with this functionality is that the System was incorrectly including acres from System-generated child lines (e.g., SE or SCO). Since acres from these System-generated child lines are direct duplicates of the parent line acres, the child lines acres should not have been included when summing total acres in each MCEU. With this ticket, the logic that sums and stores total acres within the MCEU was updated to exclude System-generated child lines. It's important to note that this does not include child lines created by manually duplicating a line in Fast Edit AR.