How we delivered efficiency gains and improved customer experience via the bank draft collections process for UTS.

1. IMPROVING THE INTERNATIONAL STUDENT EXPERIENCE
THE SITUATION
Committed to providing a great student experience, University of Technology Sydney (UTS)
competes with universities around the globe for students’ attention, and each year attracts
more than 5,000 new international students from over 120 countries. With so many options
available to students, making an informed choice on where to pursue their education can be
very difficult and require a lot of research. Every step in the recruiting and admission process
has an impact.
Once a student decides to attend UTS, they must turn their attention toward navigating a
new set of complexities, such as moving to Australia, getting through the Visa process, and
making a tuition fee payment. For everyone at UTS, from the Vice Chancellor all the way
down, process improvements is a priority. According to Harvey Singh, Manager, Financial
Accounting, Corporate Finance, who has worked at UTS for the past 15 years, “Our university
must compete globally or get left behind; we don’t have the luxury of not doing it.”
THE CHALLENGE
Prior to working with Flywire, UTS did not have an online payment option. This ultimately
resulted in bank drafts or Telegraphic Transfers (TTs) being sent to and needing reconciliation
by UTS each year. There was a danger of drafts being lost prior to being banked and also
involved someone having to take a large amounts of drafts to be banked twice a day during
peak periods. Each individual telegraphic transfer would take days to trace, and ultimately
many payments were short, requiring the university to contact the student and/or their family
to request the full amount. “For many students, the first thing they would hear from us after
accepting their offer would be that they still owe us” says Nikki Ekanayake, Associate Director
Recruitment, UTS International. You want the very first experience you have with a student
who has accepted their offer to be a good one not one where you have to explain why they
needed to pay more money.”
Case
Study
UTS AT A
GLANCE
43,000
Total student
enrollment
12,500
International student
enrollment
200,000+
Number of alumni
180
Number of
undergraduate
coursesFLYWIRE.COM/SCHOOL
FLYWIRE.COM/WEBINAR

2. “At times, there would be transactions which were irreconcilable. This means no student ID, no application ID, sometimes the name of a
parent or other family member, or maybe no name at all. UTS would then need to wait for students to contact UTS and provide additional
evidence of funds transfer to try and identify the payments, which in turn delayed the issuance of visa documentation” says Nikki, who has
worked at UTS for the past 20 years.
RESULTS
Since the Flywire solution has been in place, the amount of work for the UTS team has been cut down immensely. The number of payments
via bankdraft and TT has reduced significantly cutting down on the need for banking twice a day and reducing the risk of lost payments.
“Now that we have Flywire, there are only a few bankdrafts per week. This really cuts down on the work,” said Singh. “For the back office,
it is all about being as efficient as possible. We are constantly challenged to do more with less, so we need to find better ways to do things.
If we improve efficiencies in the back office, the benefits extend to the front office and improve the student experience. One bad student
experience could lead to something bad for UTS. The best case experience is when no one knows what we do and it just happens.”
Students appreciate a simple-to-navigate process and also reap the benefits of an easier Visa approval as their payments are tracked and
integrated into the system more quickly. Ekanayake explains, “Students know that what they pay will hit the other side with the right
amount. There are no hidden costs.”
ABOUT UTS
UTS was established as a university in 1988
and is located in Central Sydney. UTS has
a singular vision, to be a world-leading
university of technology. UTS’s purpose
in support of this vision is to advance
knowledge and learning to progress the
professions, industry and communities of
the world.