Best Federal Student Loan Servicers in the United States

Below are some of the best federal student loan servicers:

• Cornerstone

This is one of the best federal student loan servicers. This is the Utah System of Higher Education, also known as Cornerstone. You could be assigned Cornerstone as your service regardless of which state you live in. Cornerstone ended up with 25 complaints over the past year.

That sounds pretty good. But going with the 600,000 customer estimate again, that comes out to 42 complaints per million customers, which is twice as many complaints as the next two servicers on our list.

• HESC / EdFinancial Services

This also one of the best federal student loan servicers. Also, it’s known as EdFinancial Services. It ended up finishing in a dead heat with Granite State in customer complaints. Both had 13 complaints filed with the CFPB over the past year. That’s only about 22 complaints per million customers.

While that sounds pretty good, you may still run into issues with HESC if you’re assigned to it as your servicer. In Student Loan Planner’s own survey from the summer of 2018, only two respondents had their loans with HESC. Both responses were negative.

• Granite State

As mentioned above, Granite State Management & Resources, or GSM&R Student Loan Servicing, ended up tying with HESC in the number of complaints customers submitted to the CFPB.

This is also one of the best federal student loan servicers. At a rate of 22 complaints per million customers, that’s nearly 30 times less complaints per customer than Navient.

• OSLA

The Oklahoma Student Loan Authority (OSLA) is a servicer that has been around since the 1970s. And they seem to know what they’re doing. Only 11 OSLA customers filed complaints with the CFPB over the past year.

Again, your chance of having OSLA as your servicer (or any nonprofit servicer for that matter) are small. But if you are assigned to OSLA, consider yourself very lucky. It’s also one of the best federal student loan servicers.

• MOHELA

This is also one of the best federal student loan servicers. The Higher Education Loan Authority of the State of Missouri (MOHELA) is the first nonprofit federal student loan servicer to make it onto our list, narrowly squeaking ahead of Nelnet.

There tends to be a naturally positive correlation between the number of loans a company services and the number of complaints it gets. And this isn’t just the sheer number of complaints (which would obviously be expected), but the percentage of customers who make complaints as well.

In other words, smaller loan servicers not only have fewer total complaints but also tend to have fewer complaints per customer. This is probably because servicers who have fewer customers are able to give the ones they have better customer service and attention.

• Nelnet

This is also one of the best federal student loan servicers. If you were assigned Nelnet as your student loan servicer, please note. You could look at it in two ways: On one hand, you could be bummed that you’ve been assigned one of the “Big Four.” Also, you could be thankful you weren’t assigned FedLoan or Navient.

Although it has had its own fair share of complaints, Nelnet customers tend to be much happier on the whole. In total, Nelnet received 120 complaints per million customers over the past year. Not terrible for a company that services over 19% of all student loans.

However, that’s still a significant number of complaints, though. If you’re wondering what Nelnet customers tend to feel frustrated about, you may want to read the most common complaints about Nelnet.

In a Nutshell

The above are some of the best federal student loan servicers. The assessment is based on several factors. One such factors is the level of complaint leveled against these services.

Thus, it’s important you note that this ranking may change in the future. For now, this is how it stands. Though they were not arranged serially.