Regent Education today announced the release of Regent Award Version 4.8, which extends powerful automation for R2T4 processes across all enrollment types (including terms with modules and non-term) and increases automation for Loan Aggregate Calculations, a capability that helps ensure institutions don’t overaward.
Extended R2T4 Automation
Automated R2T4 Post Withdrawal Disbursements: Regent’s previous release supported R2T4 in cases when the student’s financial aid for the R2T4 period was both fully earned and fully disbursed. This release extends that automation to also support R2T4s that result in Post Withdrawal Disbursements (PWDs). Now, for any enrollment model, Regent Award will automatically process the full R2T4 and determine which PWD disbursements are eligible to be disbursed or offered to the student and then either disburse them or generate an offer communication.
New PWD “Do Not Offer” and Cancellation Features: This enhancement will eliminate the hours institutions spend checking to see if PWDs can be offered to students and tracking offered loans to make sure they are cancelled when not accepted. Even when full automation is not activated by the institution, Regent Award determines which loan PWDs are earned, but cannot be offered because they are “second or subsequent” disbursements, the student was not at least half-time, or the student was required to and did not attend the first 30 days of class. In addition, this enhancement will allow institutions to configure different offset dates at which point any unaccepted PWD offers will automatically be canceled – the configuration option accommodates institutions electing to process disbursements to borrowers who respond after the formal PWD deadline.
Extended Aggregate Loan Calculation Automation
With the release of 4.8, Regent has further reduced the manual research necessary to avoid over- or under- awarding in special loan aggregate cases. Regent Award has updated the treatment of National Student Loan Data System (NSLDS) aggregate data to accommodate any disbursements from open loan periods transmitted to the US Department of Education’s Common Origination and Disbursement (COD) system that have not yet processed from COD to NSLDS in time to be included in the ISIR or Financial Aid History file. This Release also includes a new task notification to users when new NSLDS information includes a loan with pending disbursements processed by another institution.
“Continuing to improving our clients’ ability to serve current and prospective students is paramount in all that we do; and, we are pleased to announce Release 4.8, which extends our automation capabilities and allows our clients to further increase the speed and accuracy of their financial aid processing.” said Ron Dinwiddie, Vice President of Product Management.
“As a Beta-release partner to Regent on 4.8, we’re looking forward to this increased level of R2T4 automation as it will eliminate the hours we spend on manual processes associated with Post Withdrawal Disbursements and aggregate loan calculations,” said Ken Jackson, Financial Aid Director, Brigham Young University – Idaho.