Your Federal Student Loan Service May Change
If you have federal student loans, you may be aware that although the loans are government-owned, they involve a different company – service personnel – for the day-to-day work of collecting payments from borrowers. But soon the way you pay your monthly student loan bill will change and you may even find that you have a new loan officer.
Last week, the Department of Education and Federal Student Aid announced the companies that have received contracts to service federal student loans under a new, more centralized system.
In particular, as of December 2020, Nelnet and the Great Lakes are not in use. If your monthly statement comes from one of these companies, you can expect that the service of your loan will be outsourced to another.
Confused yet? Yes, there is a lot going on here. But the upcoming changes are meant to make bickering with the attendants a little less like grazing cats.
There are currently nine student loan companies operating on four platforms. This means that if you have multiple loans run by multiple service companies, chances are good that you will have to go to several different websites – they all look completely different – to pay your bills or get information about yours. loans. In addition, all service centers have their own training methods for service representatives.
In accordance with the centralized program of the Ministry of Education, all servants will receive ongoing training in customer service. After all, all five service centers will allow you to pay your bill through a centralized loan processing platform at studentaid.gov.
According to the Federal Student Assistance Program, the currently servicing organizations for student loans are:
- CornerStone
- FedLoan Service (PHEAA)
- Granite State – GSMR
- Great Lakes Educational Loan Services, Inc.
- HESC / Edfinancial
- MOHELA
- Navient
- Nelnet
- OSLA Services
- ESCI
- The default troubleshooting group (also known as Maximus Federal Services, Inc.)
The Ministry of Education’s announcement lists the new service providers:
- LLC “Edfinance Services”
- FH Cann & Associates LLC
- MAXIMUS Federal Services Inc.
- Missouri Higher Education Lending Authority (MOHELA)
- Texas Guaranteed Student Loan Corporation (Trellis)
Nelnet will also have Federal Service Family Education Loans (FFEL) and private education loans, the company said in a release .
Regardless of your student loan provider (but perhaps especially if you are paying through Nelnet or Great Lakes), stay tuned for any changes along with your regular monthly statements.
If the servicer changes, you can expect to be notified by email or by email in advance of the breaker, and you may need to re-register with your new service agent’s website.
Until then, continue to pay off your loans as planned, or follow your current abstinence plan. Your service staff will advise you when it is time to make any changes to your payment method.