Case Study: Victoria University of Wellington
A Lesson in Foreign Payments: Victoria University of Wellington excels with Custom House's online solutions
Universities, colleges and specialty educational institutions all face the same problem when it comes to international students: ineffective and time-consuming procedures for sending, processing and receiving international student fees and coordinating admission and housing information.
The process for both international students and accounting staff is frustrating, inefficient and costly.
In the United States alone, the international student population contributes over 14.5 billion dollars to the US economy.
Wayne Morgan, the Chief Financial Officer at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand, has first-hand experience with the inadequacies of these systems and the extent to which they monopolize working hours, create unexpected costs for the school and frustrate otherwise positive student-school relations.
Worldwide, international student enrollment is increasing dramatically year over year. As such, schools need to adopt efficient systems to deal with this influx. Instead of wasting valuable time dealing with discrepancies and costly inefficiencies, schools could focus on making the experience positive and seamless for both students and staff, ensuring that their institution remains competitive in the global education market.
Founded in 1899, Victoria University of Wellington is a capital city University. With 2,000 full-time educators, close to 20,000 students and 3,000 international students, it’s a busy and vibrant school that attracts students from all across the globe. With international student numbers increasing, Morgan knew that the University had to find a simple and efficient solution for processing these students.
The number of higher education students expected to enroll outside their country of citizenship by 2025 will be 7.2 million.
In 2006 there were close to 318,000 international students studying in Australia, an increase of more than 10% from 2005.
F for Foreign Payments
Morgan outlines the challenges that the University faced with its previous solutions: “For starters, our focus was to grow the University’s foreign student population to keep pace with funding pressures. At the same time, there was no accurate way to track foreign payments. Payment verification itself was slow and stalled the students’ visa applications and we were dealing with multiple international banks, each with different processes.” Morgan was convinced that they needed a simple solution - fast! “We were recruiting students from all over the world and yet we had highly inefficient ways of dealing with them.”
Morgan explains how the University was getting lost in the disorganized processes associated with international student fee payments: “Wire transfers would arrive without student ID references, checks would take up to 2 weeks to clear and the high fees associated with credit card payments were costing the University too much money - sometimes upwards of $100,000 a year.”
International Payments 101
The University needed an efficient automated solution. In their search for a means to improve their entire system, they were directed to Custom House.
The international education industry is Australia’s second largest services export sector, contributing $10.1 billion to the Australian economy in 2005-06.
“The Custom House payment proposition almost sounded too good to be true,” says Morgan. “A modern online payment system that would integrate with our current systems at virtually no cost to the University. We implemented the student-friendly, simple and effective system with no hassles and no investment.”
Custom House’s online international payment solutions provide the University’s international students with immediate feedback regarding their payment. The University now receives the payment quickly with the correct information to process it efficiently. Morgan explains that “the reconciliation process is automated and simplified, which saves time and money. Furthermore, Custom House’s competitive exchange rates provide our foreign students with an easy and cost-effective method of paying tuition and other student fees online.”
For the staff, data input and transaction times have decreased significantly. Full online access to student payment information on all transactions means fast implementation with no capital investment costs.
“The students have access to the payment platform directly through the University’s website,” says Morgan. “They can make payments in 12 different languages, can pay in their local currency, can make payments from any location, anytime and they receive email reminders and invoices regarding recent transactions. The efficiency of this service, and the increased quality of service that we can now offer our international students is invaluable - for the students and for our staff.”
Now that Victoria University of Wellington has the products and systems in place to manage the increasing volume of international student payments, they can focus their efforts on international recruitment and maintain a competitive edge in this global market.
-
Contact Us
If you have any questions about international payments, risk management or the specific products and services that Custom House offers please don’t hesitate to contact us.
-
Custom House in the News
Check out Custom House on CEP’s ‘Chatter’
