Best Federal Student Loan Servicers in the United States
Best Federal Student Loan Servicers: As a student, it’s important you know this. When it comes to federal student loan servicers, you won’t often have it your way. The reason is this. The government chooses your student loan servicer for you. This is when you first take out your federal student loan.Please note. Nearly 90% of all federal student loans are assigned to one of the Big Four. These big four are:
- FedLoan Servicing.
- Great Lakes.
- Navient, or Nelnet.
- Cornerstone.
- Granite State.
- HESC.
- MOHELA, or OSLA.
Important Information
Getting to Know Your Best Federal Student Loan Servicers
If you intend knowing who is your loan servicer, please take note. The first thing that you need to do after you graduate is this. Head over to the National Student Loan Database. This is a great resource that is maintained by the U.S Department of Education. It tracks who services your student loans;. Also, it tracks the balance of your loans.
Given how much can change with your student loans while you’re in school, this can be really helpful to track everything down. Also, this can be applicable to the best federal student loan servicers. To access your information, you simply need to provide the following:
- Your name.
- Social Security number.
- Birth date.
- And a pin number.
Furthermore, it will then show a list of your student loan debt that has been registered with the Department of Education. This may include all federal student loans and some private student loans.
Once you know who your student loan servicer is, take note. You need to contact them. This is important if you’re nearing the end of your deferment period. And haven’t received a statement or any other information.
Read Also:
- Private Student Loans and Method of Application
- Prosper Personal Loans 2020 Updates
- Nelnet Student Loan
- Scholarships for Low Income Students 2020
- Getting the Best Student Loans Without a Cosigner
Some of the Best Federal Student Loan Servicers
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.