Award Faster and Enjoy Your Holiday Break: Let SIG Handle Your New Year Financial Aid Roll

Chestnuts roasting on an open fire. Gingerbread houses drying (or abandoned) on the kitchen table. A marathon of holiday movies. Eggnog in a reindeer mug.

For many higher ed financial aid professionals, these iconic symbols of holiday leisure have become a pipe dream, replaced with long hours of loading ISIRs, combing through rows of comment codes, and slogging through the tedium of the New Year Financial Aid Roll.
It doesn’t have to be this way. The experts at SIG can configure your New Year Roll for 2027-2028, give you the holiday break you’ve always dreamed of, and set your institution up for long-term success.

The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Men…

Jamie Hamby, Senior Consultant at SIG, spent 19 years at Cleveland State Community College, 10 of those as Director of Financial Aid. “Every year, I had all these ideas about processes I wanted to streamline and functions I wanted to implement,” she recalled. “But you never want to change processes midstream so I’d put those ideas on a list for the next aid year. Then the New Year Roll would sneak up on us and all of a sudden you have pressure to package aid as quickly as possible. I would always just sigh and say, ‘I’ll try again next year.’”

Hamby and the SIG team of Financial Aid consultants now help colleges and universities across the country make all the changes she’d always wanted to make, finish their New Year Roll ahead of schedule, and accelerate the timeline for awarding prospective students.

Staying Current and Compliant

When colleges and universities hire SIG to help with their New Year Roll, they free their financial aid teams up to focus on reconciling loans, managing withdrawals, and tying up myriad loose ends from the year. They also get experts with up-to-date knowledge of the latest Ellucian functionality.

“We can help identify inefficiencies or functionality from Ellucian that they simply are unaware of,” Hamby said. “Sometimes clients miss an update, or they simply don’t have enough time to figure it out.”

The SIG team will help identify which rules, algorithms, and codes specific to the current year need updated for 2027-2028 so you stay compliant. They’ll also ensure that old codes are removed from the system to prevent confusion down the road.

The Gift That Keeps Giving

While clients reap the benefit of time and expertise in the short term, SIG Financial Aid consultants strive to create a Banner or Colleague environment that’s easier to roll year after year.

“When I’m helping a school with the New Year Roll, I want to avoid hardcoding whenever I can,” Hamby said. “You don’t have time to identify and fix all of this hard-coded data. Instead, I like to utilize dynamic coding as much as possible and set up their system so that it can roll from year to year with minimal maintenance.”

SIG configures awarding, budget, and disbursement rules more dynamically so that the lift on internal teams decreases over time. The consultants also spend time documenting their work so everyone understands what’s changed and how to thrive within the new setup.

A Race to the Starting Line

Delays in financial aid notifications drastically increase the risk of students choosing other schools.

According to a recent Ellucian Student Voice Report, 22% of students would enroll elsewhere if financial aid delays exceeded two weeks, 73% would jump ship after four weeks, and 92% would choose another school if the wait lasted longer than eight weeks.

“We’re trying to get clients to the new aid cycle starting line as quickly as possible,” Hamby said. “The competition between schools is only intensifying. They’re upping the ante every year. We have a client who wants to send financial aid awards on Christmas this year as a gift to students.”

But there’s no need to panic. The experts at SIG can help you set up your New Year Financial Aid Roll faster so you can start notifying students sooner, stay one step ahead of the competition, and maybe even enjoy a much-deserved holiday break.

Let us know how we can help.