Higher One has added two more colleges to its growing roster of schools that are using the financial services provider to distribute refunds to its students. Although Higher One works with more than 110 colleges and universities in the U.S., Kansas City Kansas Community College is the company’s first client in Kansas. Both it and Texas-based Laredo Community College intend to distribute financial aid refunds electronically to students starting this fall.

Since the start of this year, Higher One, recently ranked No. 85 on the 2007 Inc. magazine list of the 500 Fastest Growing Companies in the U.S., has reached financial aid refund agreements with 18 institutions around the country.

“Providing quality and innovative student services is a top priority at Laredo Community College,” LCC President Juan L. Maldonado said. “With OneDisburse Refund Management, LCC is looking forward to enhancing services associated with the distribution of student financial aid refunds electronically, thus creating another unique benefit for our students.”

“LCC’s goal is to streamline the current process of disbursing financial aid refunds. This program will eliminate the need for students to stand in line for their financial aid refund checks and make the process more convenient and efficient for our students,” LCC Bursar Norma Cano said.

“The cost and time burden of manual refund checks was becoming too much,” said Brian Bode, KCKCC’s dean of financial and administrative services. “Higher One contacted us and we started looking into the program. We took it to our Student Senate and they were enthusiastic about the program so we made the decision.”

Higher One enables institutions to streamline the refund distribution process by offering students up to three ways to receive their refunds: direct deposit to the OneAccount, a no minimum balance, no monthly fee, FDIC-Insured checking account provided by Higher One, direct deposit to another bank account of the student’s choice, or a paper check mailed to the address on file.

Higher One collects and maintains all student bank account numbers, routing numbers, and refund preferences, provides marketing material to the institution to educate students on the process, distributes the refunds based on each student’s preference, and handles any customer service related to the distribution of refunds.

“The quality of the program, its history of success, and the willingness to work with us in some unique areas we needed to address set Higher One’s services apart from other options we considered,” said Bode.