HOBOKEN, N.J.–A new analysis shows which student lenders received the most complaints from consumers to the CFPB.
Previously, noted LendEDU, the Bureau published its own compilation of student loan-related complaints submitted to its own database throughout the year. But it has not done so for 2018, and in its absence LendEDU said it compiled the data on its own using the same CFPB complaint database to conduct its analysis.
“Between the dates of January 1, 2018 and December 19, 2018, there were 9,946 student loan-related complaints submitted to the CFPB,” the company said. “LendEDU analyzed each to uncover 2018 student loan trends like the most common issue, the most complained about company, and breakdowns of both federal and private student loan complaints.”
LendEDU noted the CFPB organizes the complaint database in a way that breaks student loan-related complaints into two different products, the first being complaints directly related to either private student loans or federal student loans, and the second being complaints related to debt collection for either private or federal student loans. The former will be discussed first.
An Overview
Between Jan. 1, 2018 and Dec. 19, 2018, there were 8,340 student loan-specific complaints filed with the CFPB. Of those, 64% pertained to federal student loans, while 36% dealt with private student loans, according to LendEDU.
LendEDU said that taking into account the entire U.S. population, there were 26 student loan-specific complaints per one million U.S. residents.
“Not surprisingly, Navient once again led the way this year when it came to the most complained about federal student loan companies; 42%, or 2,239 complaints, of the 5,362 federal student loan complaints were lodged against Navient,” LendEDU reported. “AES/PHEAA was the closest pursuer, representing 26%, or 1,399 complaints, of all federal student loan complaints.”
As LendEDU noted, Navient is currently dealing with lawsuits in Pennsylvania, California, Illinois and from the CFPB itself.
Another Category
Since some student loan servicing companies are far bigger than others, it could be deemed unfair to single out one company for having more complaints than another company simply because it deals with more borrowers, said LendEDU. To mitigate that, LendEDU said it put together a table that ranks the four federal servicers that received the most complaints in 2018 after each company’s complaint data was normalized by the number of borrowers that each institution handled. It used data from the Department of Education’s Federal Student Aid website.
LendEDU took the respective total number of complaints at AES/PHEAA, Great Lakes, Nelnet, and Navient, divided that number by the loan recipient volume at each company, and multiplied the result by one million to get the number of federal student loan complaints per one million loan recipients.
The top three companies with most federal student loan complaints per million loan recipients: Navient Solutions, AES/PHEAA and Nelnet.
The LendEDU analysis also examines private student loans and complaints filed against those lenders. For the full report, go here.