The Department of Education’s (ED) Office of Federal Student Aid (FSA) announced that it hired five companies to provide enhanced customer support to the more than 68 million student loan customers. These companies will enhance customer service through phone, chat, social media, postal mail, and email with students, parents, and borrowers. These companies, which include Edfinancial Services LLC, F.H. Cann & Associates LLC, MAXIMUS Federal Services Inc., Missouri Higher Education Loan Authority (MOHELA), and Texas Guaranteed Student Loan Corporation (Trellis Company), will also support back-end processing for those contacts.
The hiring of these companies is a part of ED’s overhaul of the current loan servicing environment. The current loan servicing environment, which will be replaced with Next Gen, features nine different servicers operating on four different platforms, which allows for inconsistent operations for the federal student loan programs. All services with these companies will be supported by a centralized loan processing platform to improve operations and reduce confusion. FSA will begin working with the new vendors immediately to ensure their systems meet the rigorous cybersecurity standards.
“This is another major step toward our commitment to improving customer service and holding our contractors accountable for their performance,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos in a press release. “Students, parents, borrowers, and schools deserve a world-class experience when dealing with FSA, and I’m confident that FSA has hired the companies with the knowledge, experience and expertise to deliver that.”
In order to ensure that agents have up-to-date knowledge to provide accurate information, FSA will provide comprehensive contact center training and oversight. Agents will begin with non-servicing work, then take on service-related activities as training persists. According to the press release, the contracts contain 41 objective, measurable service-level agreements that hold vendors to high operational performance standards.
As the Next Gen FSA initiative seeks to solve these challenges, the vision is for all customers with federally managed loans to seamlessly repay through StudentAid.gov, where customers can receive a consistent set of tools and information that are personalized to their unique circumstances.