Bristol Community College Helping Borrowers Stay on Track, Thanks to USA Funds Debt Manager

USA Funds Debt Manager^® has helped Amy Marden of Bristol Community College start communicating with delinquent student-loan borrowers, to assist them in getting back on track repaying their education loans.

Marden, the senior financial-aid counselor in the seven-person financial-aid office, began working with the Federal Family Education Loan Program about one-and-one-half years ago. As part of her job, she’s in charge of processing all loans and disbursing all loan funds for students attending the four campuses of Bristol Community College, based in Fall River, Mass. About half of the college’s 7,000 students use some sort of financial aid.

USA Funds Debt Manager is a Web-based communication tool that helps financial-aid administrators connect with borrowers and prevent student-loan defaults.

“All I have to do is load the school letterhead into the printer and sign the letters each Thursday,” she says. “USA Funds Debt Manager is so easy to use.”

Before Marden started using USA Funds Debt Manager, she says, the school had no default-prevention communication plan in place. Today, Marden sends 60 to 100 letters each week to borrowers who are delinquent in their student-loan payments or are in default. She starts sending letters when students are 20 days past due. She estimates she devotes about 10 minutes each workday to this default-prevention communication work.

When students respond to Marden’s letters, she says she can easily access their information using USA Funds Debt Manager to determine how many days delinquent their payments are and what specific letter they received.

“I can see exactly what their situation is, and I ask them how I can help,” she says.

Marden works with the students to help them access deferment or forbearance forms. She says she recently helped one student consolidate his education loans and obtain a deferment because he was returning to school. “That helped him to get a fresh start on this semester,” she says.

Marden has been using USA Funds Debt Manager for about three months. The school’s cohort-default rate for 2005 is 4.7 percent, down from 5.2 percent for the 2004 cohort.

“It’s so easy to use!” Marden says of USA Funds Debt Manager. “I can easily change information about a borrower, such as an address, and I don’t have to call someone to do it for me.”

Soon, she says, she plans to start using some of the tracking tools included in USA Funds Debt Manager to gauge the effectiveness of her efforts. USA Funds Debt Manager has a number of reporting options, including the Communication Strategy Performance Report, which tracks the number of students who received letters in the past who no longer are delinquent in their student-loan payments. The Delinquency Aging Report tells financial-aid administrators how many of their borrowers are delinquent and calculates an estimated cohort-default rate.

“USA Funds Debt Manager helps me to see who is heading into default, and I feel good that I can help these students who might not know about the deferment or forbearance options available to them,” she says. “The tool really helps me with helping my students.”