For a Midwestern university, a cash management solution for its "students abroad" program

Sending students abroad was overwhelming a school’s cash management capabilities — until it learned a valuable lesson from Citi.

The Challenge

A university in the Midwest boasted a strong “students abroad” program in the United Kingdom and Australia. To manage the financial side of the program, the school held local accounts in Pounds Sterling and Australian Dollars, with payments issued via a “local account checkbook.”

This method had some significant downsides. International accounts were cumbersome to reconcile. Staff members were often tied up resolving international service issues. Vendors complained of payment discrepancies and delays, and began charging higher rates to compensate. Internal fraud issues even arose, necessitating audits and concerning the school’s board of directors.

The Solution
Citi stepped in and replaced the school’s local UK and Australian accounts with an omnibus international account program. Its features included:

• A Web-based, Finance-authorized application that could be accessed from individual campus sites
• Expanded payment options, to include remote checks and wire payments
• Online payment status, which made it easy to resolve issues, stop payments and reissue payments on the spot
• A “maker/checker” payment process that eliminated the risk of fraud.

The Results
With Citi’s international account program, the problems that the university encountered with its local accounts solution disappeared. And, by aggregating its cross-border currency requirements, the school also realized lower foreign exchange rates and reduced transaction fees.