How to define default values to the template variable?

I want to define some default values for some of the variables in a template. How can I do that?
For example, I want to define status as ‘Initiated’ and kycCompliant as ‘False’
whenever I am creating the loan request.

There is no support for that. If a contract only has a single signatory, that signatory can create the contract with whatever values they want.

Based on your other question, I think what you really want here is multiple templates, instead of representing the states with attributes within a single template.