The UK higher education sector relies on a steady influx of international students, approximately 700,000 annually. To attract and enrol these students, most universities depend heavily on partnerships with reputable education agents.
As home to over 1,700 international students from 140 countries, Regent’s University London boasts a higher proportion of international students than most, at around 70%. Consequently, education agent commission payments constitute the majority (80%) of their outgoing payments. Unfortunately, the finance team faced significant challenges with managing these payments efficiently. This is where Flywire’s outgoing payments solution came in.
About Regent's University London
The challenges
Before Flywire, the Regent’s University London finance team managed agent commission and other vendor invoices through the university bank account. This involved manually setting up beneficiaries for each payment, and the reconciliation process was both difficult and time-consuming.
Even though most education agents invoiced the university in GBP, fluctuations in currency exchange rates (FX) and transaction fees frequently led to discrepancies between the amounts paid by the university and received by the agents. These discrepancies were exacerbated by manual FX calculations for foreign currency invoices.
Once a payment left the university’s bank account, no status updates were available to either party. As a result, neither the Regent’s University finance team nor the vendors had visibility on the payment's progress. Collectively, these challenges highlighted a need to improve the process for outgoing payments, particularly for agents as critical partners in international student recruitment.
The solution
Since implementing Flywire's efficient, streamlined, and centralised outgoing payments solution Regent's University London has revolutionised its accounts payable process. As early adopters of the solution, they have closely collaborated with Flywire to ensure the solution meets the needs of the higher education sector.
Setting up a beneficiary is a one-time task. The Regent's University team sets the payment method and payout currency, making recurrent transactions consistent and efficient. Based on the payout currency and country of destination, data formatting checks ensure accurate payment details meet the various country regulations, resulting in a 98% payment success rate. Flywire also transparently manages international currency conversion, guaranteeing vendors receive the correct amount, eliminating short balance payouts entirely.
Duplicate payment detection reduces the chance of errors and gaining approval for payments is easier than ever thanks to pre-configured workflows (of up to five layers). Approvers have all the information they need to query or authorise a payment because invoices can be quickly attached to payment requests and automated alerts and reminders help to keep the approval process moving.
The intuitive user interface means it is simple to find all payments associated with a beneficiary, both past and upcoming, and real-time status updates provide insight into a payment’s progress.
The speed with which we can make outgoing payments now is impressive. It takes just a matter of seconds to initiate a payment for an existing beneficiary, and I particularly like the "drag and drop" functionality to attach an invoice to a payment request. The university is constantly enlarging its network of education agents and Flywire’s outgoing payment solution means our team can support that growth.
