Search results for: "CARES Act" "student loan"

A coalition of groups that includes the Consumer Bankers Association, the National Council of Higher Education Resources, and consumer advocates, has sent a letter to House and Senate leadership urging Congress to extend relief to federal student loan borrowers whose loans are not covered by the CARES Act.

The borrowers in question are those with Perkins loans or Federal Family Education Loan Program (FFELP) loans that are not federally-owned and instead are owned by financial institutions, non-profit or state entities. … Continue Reading

The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act) includes the following provisions of particular interest to members of the consumer financial services industry:

Credit Reporting.  Section 4021 (Credit Protection During COVID-2019) amends the Fair Credit Reporting Act to impose new COVID-19 related reporting requirements on furnishers of information to consumer reporting agencies. … Continue Reading

Continuing its (and the White House’s) “junk fees” rhetoric, the CFPB has released a new issue of Supervisory Highlights that carries the title “Junk Fees Special Edition.”  The report discusses the Bureau’s examinations involving fees in the areas of deposits, auto servicing, mortgage servicing, payday and small-dollar lending, and student loan servicing that were completed between July 1, 2022 and February 1, 2023.… Continue Reading

Student loan servicing was the focus of recent CFPB attention in the form of a blog post, “Busting myths about bankruptcy and private student loans,” and a report (labeled a “special issue brief”) titled “Student Loan Borrowers Potentially At-Risk when Payment Suspension Ends.”  Both items raise areas of compliance risk for student loan servicers.… Continue Reading

The CFPB Education Loan Ombudsman has issued his annual report covering the period  from September 1, 2020 through August 31, 2021.

The report includes an analysis of the approximately 5,300 complaints related to private or federal student loans that the Bureau received during that period.  While complaints overall during this period trended lower, the decrease was most pronounced for federal student loan complaints which decreased approximately 32% compared to the prior year.… Continue Reading

At the end of last week, the Department of Education announced that Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has directed Federal Student Aid (FSA) to extend until December 31, 2020 the relief that was provided to federal student loan borrowers by the CARES Act.  The CARES Act suspended loan payments on federal student loans and temporarily reduced interest rates to zero until September 30, 2020. … Continue Reading

On August 8, 2020, President Trump signed four executive orders that are designed to provide additional COVID-19 relief as talks on Capitol Hill collapsed on August 7 between White House negotiators and Democratic leaders over a fifth coronavirus stimulus package. One of those actions, which is directed to the Secretary of Education in the form of a memorandum (the “Memorandum”), continues student loan payment relief during the COVID-19 crisis for certain federal student loans held by the Department of Education.… Continue Reading

Massachusetts, New Jersey, Connecticut, Illinois, Colorado, California, Washington, and Vermont have announced that they are participating in a multi-state initiative to provide relief to borrowers whose student loans are not covered by the CARES Act through agreements with certain student loan servicers.  The announcements indicated that Virginia is also participating in the initiative.… Continue Reading

Senator Elizabeth Warren, joined by a group of other Democratic Senators and Senator Bernie Sanders, sent a series of letters to companies that service private student loans requesting “a detailed report of the steps your company is taking in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and economic emergency to mitigate the financial burden facing your student loan borrowers.”… Continue Reading

The CFPB has issued “Supervisory Highlights COVID-19 Prioritized Assessments Special Edition.”

The report indicates that in May 2020, the Bureau rescheduled about half of its planned examinations and instead conducted prioritized assessments (PAs) in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.  The Bureau describes PAs as “higher-level inquiries than traditional examinations [that are] designed to obtain real-time information from a broad group of supervised entities that operate in markets posing elevated risk of consumer harm due to pandemic-related issues.” … Continue Reading