Whoever gave you the money for your education (the lender) is usually who owns your student loan. This is either the federal government or a private company. But your loan servicer is who handles the loan repayment—and who dishes out the consequences if you don't pay up.
Now that the COVID-19 payment pause has ended, student loan payments have restarted. For most borrowers, the first payment after the payment pause ended was due in October 2023. Review important concepts, tips, and recommendations for repaying your student loans at Repaying Student Loans 101.
There are two primary ways to find out which company is currently servicing your federal student loans. These include: Visiting your account dashboard at studentaid.gov and scrolling down to the “My Loan Servicers” section. Calling the Federal Student Aid Information Center (FSAIC) at 1-800-433-32432.
A loan holder is the entity that manages your student loan. The loan holder of a Direct Loan is the U.S. Department of Education (ED). The holder of a FFEL Program loan may be a lender, secondary market, guaranty agency, or ED. The holder of a Perkins Loan may be a school or ED.
Federal student loans are owned by the U.S. Department of Education while private student loans are owned by the financial institution that granted them.
Why do loans get switched or transferred to a different servicer? Sometimes, we need to transfer loans from one servicer to another—for example, when a servicer's contract with us ends. Even if we transfer your loans to a new servicer, we (the U.S. Department of Education) still own your loans.
The biggest loan servicers are MOHELA, Aidvantage and Nelnet. Your loan servicer might have changed during the payment pause. Find out who your loan servicer is by logging in to your student loan account.
Most federal student loans are owned and held by the federal government through the Department of Education. There are some older federal student loans that are owned and held by a private company or state agency.
Nelnet is a federal student loan servicer working on behalf of the U.S. Department of Education (ED), the government agency that lends you student loans.
The Supreme Court ruled we could not implement pandemic-related student loan debt relief, so we can't use your application from 2022. The new proposed regulations are different, and we're currently working to finalize their terms, including who may receive loan forgiveness.
Your student loan servicer(s) will notify you directly after your forgiveness is processed. Make sure to keep your contact information up to date on StudentAid.gov and with your servicer(s). If you haven't yet qualified for forgiveness, you'll be able to see your exact payment counts in the future.
The Qualtrics/Intuit Credit Karma report found 20 percent of borrowers hadn't made any payments on their loans. The percentage was even higher, at 27 percent, for borrowers who made less than $50,000 a year.
Thus, if you ever had a Sallie Mae loan or had Sallie Mae conduct loan servicing, that loan and servicing, likely, was transferred to Navient. Further, Navient then changed its name in 2021 to Aidvantage. See here.
The Education Department has put all SAVE borrowers into an administrative forbearance through at least April 2025, as it continues to defend the SAVE plan in court. Upcoming payments won't be due, even if you receive a bill.
Collections (offset and garnishment) on most defaulted loans will stay paused through Sept. 30, 2024, due to the Fresh Start program. Even though student loan payments have restarted, all wage garnishments remain cancelled.
The loan holder of a Direct Loan is the U.S. Department of Education. A loan servicer is a company we assign to handle the billing and other services on your federal student loan on our behalf, at no cost to you.
If you work full time for a government or nonprofit organization, you may qualify for forgiveness of the entire remaining balance of your Direct Loans after you've made 120 qualifying payments—i.e., at least 10 years of payments. To benefit from PSLF, you need to repay your federal student loans under an IDR plan.
After a referral from the CFPB, in 2014, the Department of Justice and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation ordered Navient and its predecessor, Sallie Mae, to pay almost $100 million for illegally overcharging nearly 78,000 servicemembers.
Why are my student loans being transferred to a new servicer? A student loan transfer may happen for several reasons: Private loans may be bought out by another company. Federal loans may be transferred by the U.S. Department of Education from one member of its servicing team to another.
Adults with a postgraduate degree are especially likely to have a large amount of student loan debt. About a quarter of these advanced degree holders who borrowed (26%) owed $100,000 or more in 2023, compared with 9% of all borrowers. Overall, only 1% of all U.S. adults owed at least $100,000.
Teachers with loans through Nelnet can pursue teacher loan forgiveness. Teachers may qualify to have a maximum of $17,500 or $5,000 in student loans forgiven, depending on the subject area taught, if specific requirements are met.
If your student loan balance is suddenly showing zero, some of the many reasons could be: Your federal student aid or private student loans were forgiven. You've completed one of the student loan forgiveness programs. You qualify for Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF), or.
In the case of Nelnet, Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell (D) said the company neglected to tell borrowers to resubmit their earnings and family size to remain enrolled in an income-driven repayment plan.