IVC Adds to the Growing Number of Forward Thinking Institutions of Higher Education in California to Adopt OneDisburse Refund Management
New Haven, CT - October 22, 2007 - Higher One, a financial services company focused exclusively on higher education, today announced that Imperial Valley College has elected to distribute refund payments through the company's OneDisburse Refund Management. Imperial Valley College is the third institution of higher learning in California to reach an agreement with the New Haven, Connecticut based Higher One.
IVC, a 2 year college of approximately 8,000 students located in Imperial Valley, California, used to issue paper check refunds to students in the mail. The process was expensive and time intensive. Each time financial aid refunds were issued to the college's students IVC had to pay for the costs of check paper, ink, envelopes, postage, and labor associated with distributing the checks and customer service. IVC anticipates that distributing refunds through OneDisburse Refund Management will help to make the process more efficient.
"Our current refund/financial aid disbursement process will be reduced to a few days compared to the two to three week process we currently have," explained Carlos Fletes, Director of Fiscal Services at IVC.
IVC will now issue the college's refund payments through Higher One and the company will in turn provide each student with a choice between three ways to receive his or her refunds: direct deposit to Higher One's OneAccount, an FDIC-insured checking account tied to a Debit MasterCard, an ACH to the student's current bank account, or a paper check mailed to the student's address on file.
The two electronic means of issuing these payments to the college's students enable the payments to be distributed more quickly. Students no longer have to wait for their checks to arrive in the mail. Students will receive their refunds the same day if they choose to have the refund deposited into their OneAccount and within 3 business days should they select to have the refunds sent via ACH to their third party bank account.
"I am looking forward to students getting their funds faster and the number of checks lost in the mail drastically reduced!" said Fletes. "Students will get same day access to cash on campus through a Higher One ATM"
Imperial Valley College will begin distributing refunds through Higher One in February of 2008.
About Higher One
Focused exclusively on higher education, Higher One provides Refund Management to higher education institutions and banking services to members of their community through a card based solution. Higher One's integrated solution helps it's clients reduce administrative costs, streamline business processes, create new revenue streams, increase student customer service and strengthen the campus community. Higher One's OneDisburse provides students with more choices and better services for receiving financial refunds and payroll. Higher One also offers a suite of banking services called OneFinance, which includes the OneAccount, a no minimum balance, no monthly fee checking account with the OneCard, a Debit MasterCard for ATM withdrawals and purchases, and exclusive features such as "Send Money", Easy Refund, and Campus AutoLoad. The OneFinance and OneDisburse solutions can be integrated with the institution's ID card or provided through a separate "refund only" card.
To date, Higher One has disbursed $2 billion dollars in refunds for its clients. More than 600,000 students, faculty, and staff at distinguished public and private higher education institutions use Higher One's services through their ID or refund card.
About Imperial Valley College
Established in 1962, Imperial Valley College is a public, two-year college that is home to approximately 8,000 students. IVC can be found in California's southernmost county, Imperial County, which borders both Arizona and Mexico. The campus is situated on a 160-acre site at the intersection of Highway 111 and Aten Road, in Imperial, California. This location is in the heart of Imperial County and is within reasonable commuting distance of all of the cities in the Valley. There are also extended campus centers in the cities of El Centro, Brawley and Calexico.
