Confirmation of Acceptance for Studies (CAS) and UK Visa and Immigration (UKVI) System

Tender description

SRUC requires a service provider that can fully assist with the post-acceptance stage of the College’s international student recruitment pipeline. For SRUC to achieve its ambition to become a trusted sponsor for UK Visas and Immigration (UKVI) refusal rates for our international students must be minimised. This is important to ensure continued sustainable growth in international student recruitment and to further improve service levels for our students. Lot 1: SRUC requires a service provider that can fully assist with the post-acceptance stage of the College’s international student recruitment pipeline. For SRUC to achieve its ambition to become a trusted sponsor for UK Visas and Immigration (UKVI) refusal rates for our international students must be minimised. This is important to ensure continued sustainable growth in international student recruitment and to further improve service levels for our students. We therefore require a product and/or out-sourced service that provides a full end-to end platform that makes student Confirmation of Acceptance for Studies (CAS), Visa and arrival administration simple, streamlined and fully secure for staff and students. The key, mandatory deliverables for this opportunity are: - Automation: to reduce repetitive work for staff and students, where possible, the onboarding and screening process must be automated. - Pre-CAS Checklist: international student applicants must be guided through a Pre-CAS checklist to assist with the identification and elimination of common mistakes before they become problematic for visa applications. - Compliance and Risk Management: to support SRUC's compliance with UKVI sponsor licence duties, CAS must not be issued to international student applicants who are at risk of UK Visa refusal. Early detection of risks and mistakes must be highlighted to enable timely intervention by the SRUC compliance team. - Applicant Credibility Assessments: provision of interview management capability and separate, independent assessment of interviews. The system must be able to provide transcripts and temporary storage of recorded interviews. - GDPR Compliance: the system must be fully compliant with UK GDPR. In addition, provision of secure document upload facilities, data encryption, and automated document deletion and retention as per UKVI compliance will also be required. - Data Management: a full data management facility including the management of information and documentation for the CAS by the SRUC Admissions and International Recruitment team. - Automated Follow-Up: allows for efficient, automated student follow-up to request relevant information and documents. -Integration: integrates with SRUC’s UnitE student management system through common protocols such as SFTP or API. - Agent Portal: the solution must also provide a portal to support document management between third-party Agents and student applicants.