USA Funds Borrower Connect Helps Colleges Improve Loan Default Rates

INDIANAPOLIS, Feb. 21, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- USA Funds®, a nonprofit organization that helps American families benefit from postsecondary education, has introduced USA Funds Borrower Connect™, a Web-based tool that helps colleges connect with their student loan borrowers to promote successful student loan repayment and curb loan defaults.

"Contact with student loan borrowers is a proven best practice for preventing student loan default," said Denise B. Feser, USA Funds senior vice president, School and Student Services. "USA Funds Borrower Connect saves campus staff time and money by aggregating the student loan information they need and helping to automate outreach to student loan borrowers."

USA Funds Borrower Connect offers college administrators the following benefits:

• Aggregates loan data from multiple loan servicers, guarantors and the National Student Loan Data System, so schools can reach out to borrowers with Federal Family Education Loan Program loans, Direct Loans and put loans to address both two-year and three-year cohort default rates.
• Automates the tasks of developing and sending letters and email messages and making telephone calls to targeted lists of student loan borrowers based on their repayment status.
• Generates on-demand reports to help colleges analyze and track their cohort default rate trends.

ITT Educational Services Inc., the parent company of ITT Technical Institutes, has adopted USA Funds Borrower Connect as the cornerstone of its student-borrower services division. Division staff reach out to former students who are having difficulty making their student loan payments to counsel them about their options for resolving their payment problems.

"USA Funds Borrower Connect has the data we need for our student-borrower services staff to have informed conversations with our borrowers," said Gregory C. Wallis, vice president, finance, ITT Educational Services Inc.

Wallis, who monitors trends in the student loan repayment status of as many as 160,000 former students, had been searching for a service that would provide the data to support communication campaigns to student loan borrowers who had attended ITT Tech, which has more than 130 campuses across the nation.

"With the advent of new three-year cohort default rate standards to determine whether colleges qualify to participate in federal student aid programs, we've received numerous requests from schools for a tool to support outreach to their student loan borrowers," Feser said. "We believe that USA Funds Borrower Connect is a very cost-effective solution for colleges that want to reduce loan default rates and help their student loan borrowers avoid additional loan costs and damage to their credit by preventing loan delinquencies and default."

For additional information about USA Funds Borrower Connect, college administrators can visit www.usafunds.org/borrowerconnect or contact USA Funds at (800) 766-0084.

Headquartered in Indianapolis, USA Funds is a nonprofit corporation that works to enhance postsecondary education preparedness, access and success by providing and supporting financial and other valued services. For more information about USA Funds, visit www.usafunds.org.

SOURCE USA Funds

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