Sorry, the user has been deleted.
Sallie Mae changes its student loan ways
Shop for it:
(added from 1 site)
Description:
By Sandra Block, Kathy Chu and Mary Beth Marklein, USA TODAY An expanding investigation of the student-loan industry is ensnaring more lenders and stoking fears that a chummy relationship between the lending industry and financial...
See more »
By Sandra Block, Kathy Chu and Mary Beth Marklein, USA TODAY An expanding investigation of the student-loan industry is ensnaring more lenders and stoking fears that a chummy relationship between the lending industry and financial aid administrators has inflated the cost of borrowing for college. Sallie Mae, the nation's largest private student-loan provider, agreed Wednesday to pay $2 million and to stop compensating financial aid officials with trips and other perks for serving on its student lending advisory boards. The lender which works with 5,600 schools and has nearly 10 million borrowers also agreed to stop running university call centers where its staffers often identified themselves as part of the university, rather than as part of Sallie Mae. TELL US: What experiences have you had with student loan lenders? Q&A: Ins, outs of preferred lender lists Its settlement with New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo comes a week after Citibank, the second-largest private lender, also agreed to a $2 million settlement. Settlement money collected from lenders will be used to educate students and their parents about loans, Cuomo said. "The lending industry works when consumer confidence is high, and people have to trust the product they're buying," Cuomo says of his inquiry into the student loan industry. "Our position is very simple: Loan decisions should be made in the best interests of the students, and not in the best interest of the school." Sallie Mae acknowledges that it operated call centers for universities and paid for trips for financial aid officials to visit its loan-servicing center and to attend advisory board meetings. The exact financial cost to students isn't clear. But Cuomo says financial arrangements between lenders and schools could add hundreds of dollars to a student's loan costs.
See less »
Tags:
Buy itusatoday.com
Added by 1 people