Navient denies the allegations, and a spokeswoman told Fusion via email seven and a half minutes was the average call time, not a target. The company maintains caller satisfaction and customer experience are a significant part of call center representatives’ ratings.
But in a 24 March motion it filed in federal court for the CFPB’s lawsuit, the company also said: There is no expectation that the servicer will act in the interest of the consumer. Rather, it argued, Navient’s job was to look out for the interest of the federal government and taxpayers.
Researchers argue more data would help them understand how to improve the student loan process and prevent more people from being overwhelmed by debt
Navient does get more per account when the servicer is up to date on payments, but getting borrowers into a repayment plan also has a cost because of the time required to go over the complex options.
The same day the CFPB filed its lawsuit, Illinois and Washington filed suits in state courts. The offices of www.getbadcreditloan.com/payday-loans-ma/braintree/ attorneys general in nine other states confirmed to Fusion that they are investigating the company.
At a recent hearing in the Washington state case, the company defended its service: The State’s claim is not, you didn’t help at all, which is what you said you would do. It’s that, you could’ve helped them more. Navient insists it has forcefully advocated in Washington to streamline the federal loan system and make the repayment process easier to navigate for borrowers.
And it’s true, Navient, and the broader industry, have stepped up efforts in recent years to influence , Navient executives have given nearly $75,000 to the company’s political action committee, which has pumped money mostly into Republican campaigns, but also some Democratic ones. Over the same timespan, the company has spent more than $10.1m lobbying Congress, with $4.2m of that spending coming since 2016. About $400,000 of it targeted the CFPB, which many Republican lawmakers want to do away with.
Among the 22 former federal officials who lobby for Navient is the former US representative Denny Rehberg, a Republican, who once criticized federal aid for students as the welfare of the 21st century. His fellow lobbyist and former GOP representative Vin Weber sits on a board that has aired attack ads against the CFPB, as well as on the board of the for-profit college ITT Tech, which shuttered its campuses in 2016 after Barack Obama’s Department of Education accused it of predatory recruitment and lending.
Not surprisingly, Fusion found a sharp increase in Navient’s spending in states considering such regulations, with the majority of the $300,000 in Navient state lobbying allocated since 2016.
In Maine and Illinois, the legislatures were flooded with Navient and other industry lobbyists earlier this year, after lawmakers proposed their own versions of the license bills. The Maine proposal failed after Navient argued the issue should be left to the federal government. The Illinois bill passed the legislature, but the Republican governor, Bruce Rauner, vetoed it in August following lobbying from an industry trade group. Rauner said the bill encroached on the federal government’s authority.
In 2008, Congress made it illegal for the Department of Education to make the data public, arguing that it was a risk for student privacy. Private colleges and universities lobbied to restrict the data.
In response to what they see as a lack of federal oversight, California, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and the District of Columbia recently required student loan servicers to get licenses in their states
Today, companies like Navient have compiled mountains of data about graduations, debt and financial outcomes which they consider proprietary information. The lack of school-specific data about student outcomes can be life-altering, leading students to pick schools they never would have picked. Nathan Hornes, a 27-year-old Missouri native, racked up $70,000 in student loans going to Everest College, an unaccredited school, before he graduated.
