USA Funds Web Site Helps Borrowers Keep ‘Promises’

A feature on the USA Funds^® Web site is successfully encouraging student-loan borrowers with seriously past-due accounts to keep their promises to resolve their payment problems.

Nearly half the borrowers who made online promises to resolve their loan delinquencies through payment, deferment or loan consolidation between June and August 2006 had kept their promises through the end of August. Those promises resolved more than $6 million in past-due student-loan accounts. All of the borrowers previously had payments that were 60 days or more past due.

USA Funds’ online Loan-Payment Solutions feature offers the following resources to help borrowers with delinquent accounts resolve their payment problems:

• “Make a promise to pay” permits borrowers to spread their required payments over 30 days.
• “Postponing payment” offers a decision tree that guides borrowers through the often-confusing and complex requirements to qualify for deferment, and online “wizards” help borrowers complete and submit deferment-request forms.
• “Evaluate loan consolidation” provides information about the benefits of loan consolidation, a calculator to estimate consolidation-loan payments and access to the consolidation-loan application.

Borrowers also can view their outstanding loan balances and the number of days their payments are past due, and can obtain contact information for their lenders or loan servicers by logging in to the site.

“Loan-Payment Solutions is just one tool in our array of services to prevent loan defaults,” says Kevin Tharp, USA Funds manager of delinquency and default oversight. “Although proactive contact with borrowers is critical to successful default prevention, some borrowers benefit from the self-service concept offered by Loan-Payment Solutions.”

Financial-aid professionals can direct borrowers to http://www.loanpaymentsolutions.org/. USA Funds also offers an insert that schools can include in mailings to delinquent borrowers. The insert, “Online Student-Loan Assistance — Resolve Your Payment Problems" is available for ordering online. You will need Adobe Acrobat Reader to access a sample of the publication from the USA Funds Web site.