About Edfinancial Services - Edfinancial Services (2024)

FAQs

About Edfinancial Services - Edfinancial Services? ›

Headquartered in Knoxville, Tennessee, Edfinancial Services is your student loan servicer. We provide customer service on behalf of your lender, including answering your questions, helping you with repayment plans, and processing your student loan payments.

In fact, EdFinancial Services was sanctioned by the CFPB in 2022 for providing false information or misrepresenting eligibility conditions for student loan forgiveness to borrowers. As a penalty, the company was ordered to pay $1 million and required to supply affected borrowers with correct loan information.

If you've been contacted by EdFinancial and wondered if they were scamming you, don't ignore the letters or the emails. They're legit. (But we'll talk more about student loan scams later.) EdFinancial is a student loan servicer—and they might even be your loan servicer.

If you repay your loans under an IDR plan, any remaining balance on your student loans will be forgiven after you make a certain number of payments over 20 or 25 years.

About EdFinancial Student Loans

The Knoxville-based company was founded by CEO Tony Hollin in 1988.

Edfinancial is not a student loan lender but rather a student loan servicer. If you take out a federal student loan, the U.S. Department of Education will assign you to one of the student loan servicers that oversee federal student loans.

Over 2.5 million borrowers who have taken out student loans with either the Oklahoma Student Loan Authority (OSLA) or Edfinancial had their personal information exposed in a data breach this summer.

Loan types include Direct Subsidized, Direct Unsubsidized, Direct Parent PLUS, Direct Graduate Student PLUS (Grad PLUS) loans, and Direct Consolidation loans.

Loan types include Direct Subsidized, Direct Unsubsidized, Direct Parent PLUS, Direct Graduate Student PLUS (GradPLUS) loans, and Direct Consolidation loans. These student loans have low interest rates and flexible repayment terms.

Sometimes, we need to transfer loans from one servicer to another—for example, when a servicer's contract with us ends. We also transfer loans when borrowers sign up for a program, such as Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF), that is handled by a specific servicer (in the case of PSLF, that servicer is MOHELA).

Which student loans are automatically forgiven? ›

Borrowers with undergraduate debt would qualify for forgiveness if they entered repayment 20 years ago or more, and borrowers with graduate school debt would qualify for forgiveness if they entered repayment 25 years ago or more. Cancel student debt for borrowers previously enrolled in low-financial-value programs.

If you have loans that have been in repayment for more than 20 or 25 years, those loans may immediately qualify for forgiveness. Borrowers who have reached 20 or 25 years (240 or 300 months) worth of eligible payments for IDR forgiveness will see their loans forgiven as they reach these milestones.

Forbearance Options

This postpones repayment for borrowers who are: Experiencing an excess debt burden (the payments of all Title IV loans equal or exceed 20% of the borrower's total monthly gross income) Currently attending a non-Title IV school or Title IV school less than half-time*

If you default on your student loan, that status will be reported to national credit reporting agencies. This reporting may damage your credit rating and future borrowing ability. Also, the government can collect on your loans by taking funds from your wages, tax refunds, and other government payments.

Seeking forgiveness under Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF)? The PSLF Program forgives the remaining balance on your Direct Loans after you've satisfied the equivalent of 120 qualifying monthly payments (10 years) under an IDR plan while working full-time for an eligible employer.

Navient loans are now under Aidvantage. GSMR loans are now under Edfinancial Services. Great Lakes loans are now under Nelnet. All loans enrolled in Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) previously under FedLoan Servicing are now under MOHELA.

Forbearance Options

This postpones repayment for borrowers who are: Experiencing an excess debt burden (the payments of all Title IV loans equal or exceed 20% of the borrower's total monthly gross income) Currently attending a non-Title IV school or Title IV school less than half-time*

The problem is the dependence on mostly private companies to actually service the loans correctly. These companies have a mile-long track record of errors—wrong names, wrong addresses, wrong payments, you name it. Worse, the pandemic and the student loan repayment pause created enormous chaos in the servicer system.

This typically happens with federal and private student loans when: A borrower falls behind on monthly payments and defaults.

Sometimes, we need to transfer loans from one servicer to another—for example, when a servicer's contract with us ends. We also transfer loans when borrowers sign up for a program, such as Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF), that is handled by a specific servicer (in the case of PSLF, that servicer is MOHELA).