Default-Prevention Specialists Help Get Borrowers Back on Track

Editor’s Note: The following is a feature from the USA Funds^® 2006 annual report. USA Funds Education Access Report is highlighting the students, financial-aid administrators and education-lending professional featured in the annual report to highlight the ways in which USA Funds is a trusted partner in changing times. To access the full report online, you’ll need Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Among the ways in which USA Funds assists in default-prevention efforts is by supporting a team of more than 240 full-time professionals, backed by the latest technology and a sophisticated predictive model. The team counsels borrowers who have fallen 60 days or more behind in their loan payments about the options for resolving their payment problems.

Amber Fox is a member of the team of default-prevention specialists who assist borrowers whose accounts are delinquent.

“I’m very people-oriented,” Fox says. “If I can help somebody, it makes my day better.”

That attitude helped earn Fox a USA Funds “There for You” award in 2006, celebrating the outstanding customer service that she provides. USA Funds presented 20 USA Funds “There for You” awards during the year to recognize superior service provided by employees who support the USA Funds guarantee of education loans.

Fox’s work with a borrower who had received incorrect information about his education loans from other sources led to her nomination for the USA Funds “There for You” award.

“I dissected the whole loan scenario and broke it down for him,” Fox says. Her willingness to search for just the right avenue to resolve his delinquency and set him up with automatic withdrawal of payments from his account led the borrower to contact Fox’s supervisor to report how impressed he was with her service.

“He said she saved him,” the nomination reads.

Fox empathizes with the borrowers she assists, because she also has outstanding student loans. A 2005 graduate of Anderson University in Indiana who now attends Indiana Business College in Anderson, she has an in-school deferment on her education loans.

“I put myself in the borrower’s position,” Fox says. “I’ve been down the same avenue.”