Why Your Current Systems Probably Won't Survive an Audit

For international student admissions staff, compliance officers, and contract managers, the regulatory environment is becoming more demanding. The systems that seemed adequate last year won't meet requirements that are coming.

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The Questions You Can't Answer

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Regulators arrive with specific requests. "Show us all active agent contracts." Contracts are scattered across multiple systems, shared drives, email and filing cabinets. Compiling a complete list takes hours - it can be days in the case of College groups (we've met exec leaers for two of these groups who miscounted their agent partners by more than 500 each).

"Provide evidence of due diligence performed re: Agent X." Documentation means searching through old emails in shared inboxes, andhoping the right person saved the files to the C:Drive before they departed the business. The audit trail often doesn't exist in organised form.

"Which subagents are authorised to recruit on your behalf?" You have a spreadsheet, but it's 5 months old, and that agency has (had) 4,000+ sub-agent 'partners'. Different team members manage different relationships. There's no central record.

"Show us the version of Agent Y's contract that was active in March 2024." You have the current contract, but reconstructing past versions from email threads means guessing what changed when.

These are the questions compliance audits will increasingly come to ask. Without proper systems, they're nigh impossible to answer confidently and efficiently.

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What Digital Contracting Provides

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HE Comply solves what manual systems cannot. Or at least we remove the human fallibility that comes with demanding and ever-changing BAU operations.

Existing contracts upload easily and quickly. Our AI assistant automatically scans and extracts all relevant contract data (if a user chooses), displaying it on your dashboard for efficient access. Version control preserves every contract iteration with timestamps. Questions about past terms have definitive answers.

Audit trails document every action automatically with user identification; not just who amended a contract, but who in your business (and who and where in the agency's business if you share the agreement with your counter-party) even looked at the agreement.

Due diligence tracking monitors credentials and documentation automatically, showing you who in the team performed checks and when, and attaching the evidence of successful DD.

Your team can be alerted with impending contract expiry notifications and guided with actions to take.

Subagent management provides central visibility of authorisations. Approved subagents, approval chains, markets and terms are all documented and auditable. Soon, commission-tracking will enable you to link payments directly to specific contracts and enrolments, creating complete, verifiable documentation chains.

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Moving Beyond Manual Processes

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Contract execution happens directly within HE Comply via DocuSign. No more printing, signing, scanning and emailing back and forth. Agreements are signed instantly, creating immediate document audit trails.

Internal approvals from senior management (CFO, Legal, etc.) occur within the platform, accelerating responses and reducing the risk of losing opportunities due to delays. Your team's judgement about which agents to partner with remains critical. HE Cmply simply ensures those decisions are documented properly, approved correctly, and auditable completely.

Implementation doesn't require technical expertise. The system is designed for recruitment & compliance staff, and was built by ex-international recruiters.

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The Window Is Closing

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Every contract managed outside the system is another document without proper tracking. Every due diligence check completed manually is another record that might not be findable or defensible when needed.

The gap between what regulators demand and what manual systems can provide is widening. Institutions that bridge this gap proactively will navigate regulatory changes smoothly. Those that wait will face compliance crises under time pressure.

HE Comply exists as operational infrastructure available today. Our platform is designed specifically for higher education's compliance requirements.

The question isn't whether digital contracting will become necessary. It's whether you'll implement it whilst you still have time to do it properly.

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Trent Tighe is Chief Commercial Officer at HEComply's parent company, Feezy Pty Ltd. He worked in financial services for 20 years across Singapore, Sydney, and Hong Kong.