Full-service Refund Solutions Help Alleviate Strain on Campus Resources

We don’t have to tell you about the struggles with student refunds. Communicating with students and parents, managing regulations, keeping administrative costs low, delivering money as quickly as possible and tracking and reporting can be complicated and cumbersome, and they are highly regulated. To effectively manage refunds with an inhouse team, institutions need staff who understand the ins and outs of refunds, technology, regulations, providing great service, and all of the options available to students.

Software enables campus staff and administrators to smoothly manage student refunds, but the execution and compliance still falls on the institution. With continued competition for campus resources, maintaining a team to manage refunds inhouse can be a challenge. One way to alleviate this strain on staff and reduce budget is to outsource the management of student refunds to a third-party provider.  

Fully-Managed Refund Services

Fully-managed refund services take the pressure off internal teams at higher ed institutions by handling everything from refund disbursement transactions to communicating with students to providing reporting to administrators. Additionally, third-party providers assist with Title IV compliance and reporting to the Education Department. In these types of agreements, the campus simply provides refund details and the provider does all the work.

BankMobile Disbursements and TouchNet Collaboration

For colleges and universities in a position to outsource refunds management, TouchNet now works with BMTX, Inc. to offer a fully-managed Department of Education Tier 1-compliant refund service as an additional option. Students are able to make refund distribution preferences and monitor refund activity through links within U.Commerce. BankMobile Disbursements, BMTX’s refund solution, ensures that students get their money delivered in the safest and quickest way possible.

Higher education institutions that use both TouchNet’s U.Commerce payments solution and the BankMobile Disbursements refunds solution will soon be able to access administrator features, automate file transfers and create reports directly through UCommerce without having to log into and manage separate systems. Once in place, this single sign in solution will help reduce the strain on internal resources and help create more efficiencies on backend management.

Oversight of Student Refunds Management

By collaborating together, TouchNet and BankMobile Disbursements customers receive the benefits of a fully-managed refunds solution, and also retain internal oversight and visibility into the student refunds occurring within their student body. Administrators are able to report on the volume of refunds and the catalysts for refunds.

Visibility into student refund transactions is important because it can help identify areas on campus that need improvement and students at risk of withdrawing from the institution. Both important aspects to fulfilling student retention goals.

Contact us to learn more about fully-managed refund solutions.