Student Loan Updates and More Webinar – April 26, 2022

okay so i'm gonna go ahead and get started i know we have a lot of content to um go over and uh a lot of really great presentations from the consumer financial protection bureau also the student borrow protection center let's go ahead get started and there's still going to be some people's jumping in and some housekeeping items first thing is this webinar is being recorded and the recorded video will be published onto the dfpi's youtube channel the link to our youtube channel is right there so if you have to leave at any time you could come back later on today we will have the the entire video published onto our channel also all of your microphones and video have been disabled for the remainder of this webinar um but if you do have a question please feel free to submit it into the chat i have several staff members who are going to either try to answer the questions or record the questions so that we can answer them at the end of the session okay so um first things first i do want to give you an overview of what's going to happen today in today's genera and today's webinar uh we i will be going over some of the new student loan updates um then we'll have selena damian our dfpi student loan ombudsperson go over our the california student borrower bill of rights and the student bar protection center will talk about the public service loan forgiveness and the consumer financial protection bureau will talk about um they will actually demonstrate their new student loan debt uh repayment tool and then after that the very end we'll if we have enough time we'll go through as many questions as we can okay [Music] so updates this is kind of the big thing um a lot of things going on with student loans right now the biggest one is that the student loan repayment pause has been extended to august 31st of this year um your and so basically interest rates and repayments will restart until then um the other thing and this is kind of a new one is that uh defaulted and delinquent student loans would place back into good standing um that should happen sometime in september around september at least that's what i'm being told uh what does that mean well the most important thing to do is update your contact information with the us department of education in case the us department of education contacts you especially if you have any kind of if your loan is delinquent or in default also it's actually great to just have your information updated with the us department of education if they have any kind of new information that needs to be sent to you about your student loan the other thing is once your loan has been put back into good standing it is incredibly important to try to keep it in good standing so that might be you know considering consolidating your loans or considering uh any of the income driven repayment plans um you don't want to be put into good standing and then suddenly move back into default or delinquency because your information was not updated by in the with the us department of education or you didn't know that this happened so um the other thing to do is there's a link we put there it's a link to our webpage it's our student borrower resources it has a ton of great information updates um a list of events that are happening also at the very bottom it's got an entire list of government agencies non-profit organizations legal firms that do that provide assistance and services to student loan bars so if you go there and you need some kind of help to talk about income driven repayments or consolidating your loans or how to get started on the public service loan uh forgiveness program that's where to go best place to get started um finally another actually a couple more updates so this was in the news recently um i think about two weeks ago um if you know anything about total and permanent disability discharge um if you are permanently or have some kind of disability um and you are certified through the social security administration your loan could have been discharged uh so just check that out also if you are not certified through the the social security administration there is an application process to apply to have your student loan discharged if you are again if you if you are total or permanent disability another thing that was thrown on my radar is interest rates for new undergraduate federal loans will increase in july this is for new undergraduate federal loans if you're considering to consolidate your loans into something new um from what i understand your your interest rates um at the end of august of course would be an average of what you currently pay for interest rates and then the last piece is the uh federal last update is the federal family education loans are now eligible for the payment pause interest waiver before they were not um and now they are so um manage that if you and look into that um okay so with that those are kind of the new updates to the student loan student loans with that i'm going to hand it off to selena damian the dfpi's student loan of buzzperson thank you cool good afternoon everyone and thank you for joining us today i will be speaking to you about this california student borrower bill of rights my name is celina damian as who said i am the student loan servicing ombudsperson here at dfpi next first i want to briefly go over some of dfpi's responsibilities as california's consumer protection agency some of our responsibilities include to license and examine companies of financial products to ensure compliance we investigate consumer complaints we take legal action when companies are not in compliance we conduct education and outreach to enhance consumer awareness and protect consumers from fraud and abuse next please so let's talk about student loan debt um so according to the department of education the institute of college access and success and education data.org in the united states student loan debt is now the second highest consumer debt category after mortgages as of friday april 22nd student loan debt is at almost 1.9 trillion in california there are over 3.8 million borrowers owing nearly 147 billion dollars in student loans in 2019 and 2020 46 of california college graduates had student loan debt and of those 51.7 percent of borrowers are under the age of 35 and the average debt load of a california borrower is 37 084 dollars and although the amount may not seem substantial the student loan system has made it very difficult for students to pay down the debt resulting in loan balances that in many cases greatly exceed the original amount borrowed next please so two important terms that a student borrower should know a lender so the lender is the company or the organization lending you the money they originate the loan they fund and they set the terms of your loan so that could be the department of education your school or a private bank the student loan servicer so the servicer is the company that tracks your loans while you are in school they collect and process your loan payments they respond to borrower inquiries and information requests they accept applications and process changes and repayment plans deferments forbearances or other activities to prevent default and they maintain the loan records so basically the student loan servicers are the main point of contact for the borrowers next so let's review some of the protections that are already in place for federal student borrowers so a borrower has the right to receive written information with loan details loan obligations and information on borrower rights and responsibilities they have a right to receive a copy of the master promissory promissory note either before or at the time the loan is disbursed a borrower has a borrower has the right to switch a repayment plan at any time they can prepay the loan in whole or in part or at any time without penalty they can receive 0.25 reduction in interest rate if they set up automatic payments they can apply for forbearance or deferment for certain defined periods if they cannot make payments and a borrower can receive loan cancellation if they meet certain qualifications next please so despite these federal protections in place student loan debt continued to grow balances ballooned and borrowers received no clear guidance or relief it became apparent that borrowers did not have the safeguards to help them get out of debt they were faced with navigating a complex system plagued with predatory practices servicers were found to routinely lose paperwork misapplied payments be unresponsive provide inaccurate information and even steer borrowers into repayment options that added to the overall cost of their loans these unfair and deceptive practices caused borrowers to slide towards default next so in 2019 um the student borrower bill of rights was introduced by assembly assembly member mark stone as assembly bill 376 it became effective january 1st of 2021 and it was supported by a coalition of about 70 civil rights higher education and consumer advocacy organizations the bill of rights applies to student loan servicers doing business in california including state licensed servicers as well as banks doing servicing it applies to borrowers with both federal and private loans and it can be found in the civil code starting at section 1788.8 and california is only one of 13 states that has established this type of advanced legislation for student borrower protection next slide please so chapters one and two of the bill of rights set industry standard and substantive substantive protections to start with it prohibits abusive acts or practices by the servicers it states that a servicer may not take unreasonable advantage of a borrower's lack of understanding it prohibits engaging in an unfair or deceptive practice or misrepresent or omit material information it establishes special protections from military borrowers borrowers working in public service older borrowers and those with disabilities the bill of rights establishes the rules of the road or standard practices that servicers must follow these rules include that servicers must process student loan payments in a timely fashion payments are received before 11 59 pm on the date payment is due should be marked as on time overpayments must be allocated in a manner that reduce the total cost of the student loan including principal balance interest and fees partial payments must be allocated in a manner that minimize late fees and negative credit reporting servicers must minimize their fees and fees are capped at six percent of the amount passed to servicers must ensure that they timely and correctly process income-driven repayment applications and other paperwork for federal student loan benefits next please servicers must ensure that their customer service personnel have appropriate training about handling paperwork have access to idr plans income driven repayment plans and other forms to access benefits and protections for federal student loans servicers must improve their record keeping and keep their records up to date so borrowers can manage their payments appropriately service servicers must maintain records for a minimum of three years after the loan is paid assigned to collections or if the account has been transferred servicers must respond to disputes and other requests for information from borrowers either orally or in writing this is called the qualified written request and the servicer must respond to the written request within 30 business days next please servicers must maintain policies and procedures to permit a borrower who is dissatisfied with the outcome of their written request to escalate the concern to a supervisor a servicer must protect a borrower from any negative consequences that are directly related to the issue in the qualified written statement or stemming from a sale assignment transfer system conversion or payments made to the original servicer in case of a transfer these negative consequences could include negative credit reporting imposing late fees loss or denial of eligibility for any benefit or protection under federal law or included in the loan contract if a student loan is transferred the servicer must notify the borrower of the new servicer 15 days before the borrower is required to send in a payment the account information must be transferred to the new servicer within 45 days of the sale and this is very important right now because millions of loans were transferred or in the process or are in the process of being transferred since some of the biggest servicers ended their contract with department of education servicers must provide specialized training for any customer service personnel that advises military borrowers borrowers working in public service older borrowers and those with disability chapters three and four of the bill of rights are related to enforcement and they establish perhaps one of the most important borrower rights a borrower has the right to take legal action against their servicer if the servicer fails to comply with any of the laws in the bill of rights this is called the private right of action and it allows borrowers to sue and collect damages and restitution if their rights have been violated it allows for trouble damages if it can be shown a student loan servicer engaged in contact conduct that substantially interfered with the borrower's right to an alternative payment arrangement loan forgiveness cancellation or discharge or any other benefit under the promissory note or higher education act and lastly chapter four also establishes the california student loan on budsperson position my position as the embeds person essentially i am the advocate for student borrowers my duties include to receive and review complaints from student loan borrowers and write route to the appropriate entity compile and analyze data on the number of student loan borrowers provide information to public to the public agencies legislators and others regarding the problems and concerns of concerns of student loan borrowers analyze and monitor the development and implementation of federal and state laws rules regulations and policies relating to student loan borrowers and report this information to the legislature once a year next please so now that we have discussed borrower rights let's discuss your responsibilities as a borrower you and your co-signer are responsible for the repayment of your loan regarded regardless of whether you graduate from college or are dissatisfied with the education you are responsible for knowing when your loan repayment begins and your required payment amount you are responsible for notifying your loan servicer of any change to your address you are responsible for notifying your loan servicer and school if your name or contact information changes if you transfer or withdraw from school after a change in employment or any change that could impact your loan also some tips for student borrowers make sure you know who your student servicer is if you don't know who your servicer is and you have a federal loan you can go to the studentaid.gov.gov website create an account if you haven't already done so and they can provide you with information on your loan and your servicer make sure you give your servicer specific instructions on how to allocate extra payments or overpayments make sure you know and you understand your rights keep copies of all documents keep in contact with your servicer and one thing that we don't commonly think about but steer clear of debt relief scams you may be searching for information debt relief or assistance with your student loans and scammers take advantage of that just remember scammers promise fast loan forgiveness they make sure to never pay an upfront fee or any fee if possible scammers can fake a government seal and do not share your fsa login information with anyone next please if you are experiencing problems with your student loan servicer or if your student loan servicer has acted unlawfully you can go on to log on to our webpage at dfpi.ca.gov there you will find information on filing a complaint the complaint link and you can also find a link to the student borrower bill of rights as well as other student related protections my email is on the screen in case you have any questions on regarding your student loan if you're not sure whether or not to file a complaint you can email our ask dfpi email if you have just general questions about what we do or other services or you can always call us at 866-275-2677 um it's absolutely important that every student loan borrower understands um especially in california their rights and uh just a question selena if they if if a borrower feels like their rights have been violated who should they contact they can file a complaint through our website but if they're not sure if they want to just check or have a a question about filing the complaint then they can give me a call um email me i'm sorry awesome thank you selena thank you okay so next up we have the student sorry uh student borrower protection center um amy at the student borrower protection center she's going to be talking about the public service loan forgiveness program amy go ahead hi everyone thank you so much for having me today my name is amy assalata i'm the outreach and advocacy manager at the student borrower protection center and we're a national nonprofit policy organization focused solely on alleviating the burden of student debt in the country and we do this through a mix of advocacy policy making and litigation strategy to rein in industry abuses protect borrowers rights and advance economic opportunity for the next generation of students um and so first i'll just briefly review the public service loan forgiveness program um generally and then i'll go over the recent changes to the program under the current waiver period next please thank you so congress created the public service loan forgiveness program in 2007 to help public service workers who were struggling with student loan debt and to make sure that future students wouldn't be deterred from entering the public service because of their student loan balances and to put it simply pslf is the promise that if a borrower works in public service and makes payments for 10 years the remainder of their debts will be forgiven but more than simply working in public service for 10 years there are normally four specific criteria so first you need to have a direct loan that's one of several federal loan types second you need to be in the correct repayment plan which for the program is typically a an income driven repayment plan or an idr plan third you need to work in the public service field and then finally you need to make 120 qualifying payments which is 10 years worth of payments next please so there were a lot of issues with the pslf program and from the beginning many borrowers were blocked out of the program because of its bureaucratic program criteria so to address this last summer or i'm sorry last fall the department of education issued a time limited waiver that would retroactively grant credit towards forgiveness for borrowers and so we'll talk about some of the change or the changes under the current labor period and how you can benefit from it essentially what the department's waiver does is give public service workers credit towards loan forgiveness regardless of what type of federal student loan they have for any period of time since october 1st 2007 when the program began and as long as they were in qualifying public service employment and their loan wasn't in default deferment or forbearance so even for months in which borrowers did not actively make a payment as long as their loan was in repayment status they can receive credit and these credits will be retroactive so borrowers can receive past credit um for for past payments that were previously ineligible so in short for any months since october 1st 2007 that a borrower had any type of federal loan worked in qualifying public service was not in default um that borrower can receive credit toward the 120 months required for loan forgiveness under pslf now as with pslf the income driven repayment program has not lived up to its promises of delivering debt relief and just last week the department of education announced that it would review the idr process and count some periods of forbearance and deferment before 2013. this means that periods in which borrowers had up to 12 consecutive months or over 36 cumulative months some cases those times of forbearance or deferment will count towards the 120 credits needed for forgiveness we expect additional details from the department of ed in the coming um in the coming weeks and we'll provide updates and and the good news is that this will only mean more qualifying payments um for some borrowers no one will lose qualifying payments as a result of this reconsideration that that was just announced last week um next please thank you um so however this this waiver isn't completely automatic so normally public service loan forgiveness requires that borrowers have a specific loan type direct loans as i mentioned and although the waiver allows borrowers with any loan type to get credit those without direct loans will have to take some steps to convert their loans into a direct into direct loans through a process called consolidation though you still will get time and credit for the time before the conversion and almost all borrowers regardless of loan types will have to certify with the department of education any periods of qualifying public service work since october 1st 2007. um importantly the oh i'm sorry importantly the department's waiver only lasts until october 31st 2022 so this means that any borrower who must change their loan type through consolidation or certify their public service work with the department must do so before this date of october 31st 2022 so this doesn't mean that everyone will receive their new credit towards loan forgiveness by this deadline just that the paperwork has to be completed and credits will be given on a rolling basis and the department might take more time beyond this deadline of october 31st 2022 to process everyone although if you get credits from the waiver those are permanent so if you didn't receive enough to meet the 120 credit requirement you can continue to accrue more credits after this deadline of october 31st adding to those that you received during the waiver and so with that in mind there are three things that all public service workers with federal student loans should do so let's review them so to figure out how this special waiver applies to you and what steps you individually need to take every borrower should do three things we'll talk about each but briefly they are to confirm your past and present employers are qualifying public service employers determine your loan types and consolidate if necessary and certify your employment with the department of education so first confirm that you have a qualifying employer nothing about this requirement changed during the waiver you still need to work in public service except that for during the waiver period you don't need to still be employed at the time that you apply for forgiveness after your 120 payments and remember that qualifying employers include any government employer so that includes federal state local and tribal governments any nonprofits that have a 501c3 tax exempt status certain other nonprofits also qualify however unions and political organizations do not so any organization with whose tax exempt status is a c4 will not be eligible for pslf nor are any for-profit employers eligible and if you aren't sure whether your employer qualifies as a public service employer for pslf the department of education maintains a list at this website at studentaid.gov that you can search it's important to note though that this list isn't necessarily exhaustive so if your employer doesn't appear but you still believe that you're in qualifying public service you can proceed with the pslf process and you can access this list by using the pslf help tool which is available at this website the employer database is the first step in the help tool so you can quickly access it to check your past and present employer status okay step two so what type of federal loans do you have the three major loan types that most folks today have are direct loans federal family education loans sometimes called fell loans and perkins loans for public service workers to get credit um to get loan forgiveness for their fell or perkins loans under the pslf waiver they will have to consolidate their loans into direct loans and consolidation is like a refinancing process with the department of education remember what's special about the waiver is that normally when you consolidated your loans you lost any past credit towards forgiveness but during the waiver you can keep that past credit and apply it to the new consolidated loan the final step that all public service workers with federal student loans should take is certifying their qualifying employment with the department of education remember the qualifying employers are any level of government 501c3 nonprofit employers and certain other nonprofit employers the form to do this is called the pslf form but it was previously called an employment certification form or ecf borrowers should certify their employment using the psl of help tool which is the same tool that you can use to confirm that your past and present employers qualify you for pslf and that tool will generate the forms that you need for you which will you will then have to have any employer that you are claiming as a qualifying public service employer sign so what's the process for getting forgiveness this is the general process but it applies to the waiver as well fia operating as fed loan servicing is currently the exclusive servicer for public service loan forgiveness so borrowers seeking pslf need to send the psl form to fia which will do a preliminary review of loan eligibility um and if you have a qualifying loan your loan will then be transferred to fia for servicing at which point it will run through the other criteria such as employment and qualifying payments unfortunately there have been a lot of problems with people finding out too late in the game that they thought they qualified but that something had gone wrong so for this reason we advise that you submit a form as soon as you're interested in pslf um and then you also do it each time or i'm sorry every year until you do it again every year until you qualify for forgiveness and then do it each time that you change public service employers you don't have to do this you could document everything after your 10 years of service but this way you have a great chance of catching any issues that might arise and dealing with them as soon as they happen the department of education has stated that they are continuing to review pslf cases on a rolling basis so there is no exact timeline for when you will receive notification from them you may have also read that fedloan is ending its contract with the department this is true and it was recently announced that another company is taking over at this point it's still okay to have everything go to fed loan because the transfer won't happen for a little while and if anyone has to have their account transport transferred the companies can handle it however you should keep a copy of all of your own records because sometimes things get lost from one company to another okay so let's just review some important takeaways so remember that credit will be given for months during which any loan type was in repayment and not in default and that because of the the announcement last week some periods of forbearance and deferment may count um prior to 2013. the deadline to apply is october 31st 2022 to um consolidate your loans if necessary and submit a pslf forms um for your employment remember to follow the steps in this presentation so confirm that your your past and present employers are eligible using the pslf help tool at studentaid.gov confirm your loan types and if they aren't direct consolidate consolidate them into direct loans and then submit pslf forms for any qualifying employer that you are seeking credit for since that date of october 1st 2007 and then file a complaint if you experience any issues um either with the california ombuds person or with the federal student aid ombudsperson um thank you so much again for having me thank you amy i know a lot of people are super interested in the public service loan forgiveness program um one of the indicators is i'm looking at the chat and just shot up how many people were asking questions um so i do want to remind you that we won't be able to answer questions right in the middle of the presentation we'll be we're going to be holding all the questions on the end and we might not have time to answer all your questions but we're going to do as best as you can to answer the most frequently asked questions um and also uh next month and on may 31st around the same time noon we will be holding uh another webinar it'll be an hour long it's gonna be dedicated just for the public service loan forgiveness program it's going to be a workshop amy will be there from the student bar protection center i'm also going to be inviting the consumer financial protection bureau to help and we're going to do as much as we can to help walk you through process it's gonna be kind of a workshop so again thank you amy i see those hands being raised um i i'm not gonna answer them right now we will save them till the end of the presentation because right now next up we have kate with the consumer financial protection bureau and um go ahead kate hi good afternoon everyone uh nice to be chatting with you in the chat um i'm gonna stay off video just because i have uh not great internet um and i don't wanna to freeze up on you um today i am going to be sharing um a tool that actually might help with some of the questions that are uh in the chat um and next slide please so before i get started i have to give you the standard disclaimer um i am making this presentation on behalf of the consumer financial protection bureau which is a federal regulatory agency however it does not constitute any kind of legal interpretation guidance or advice from the bureau which is a good thing because i'm not a lawyer i wouldn't be qualified to give you that advice anyway any opinions or views that i state are of course just belong to me um then the bureau is not responsible for them um and if you have access to this later it's it was of course being used in support of a very lively discussion in the chat um and elsewhere and it's not going to express the entirety of that discussion next slide please um if you have if you're not familiar with the consumer financial protection bureau also referred to commonly as the cfpb that would not be unusual a lot of people haven't heard of us but we are a 21st century agency that implements and enforces federal consumer financial law that means anything that just ordinary people do with their money from bank accounts to credit cards student loans auto loans mortgages all that stuff we have regulatory purview um and we also have an educational mission which is the side of the bureau that i work on and we are working to ensure that markets for these consumer financial products are fair transparent and competitive transparent meaning that you have the same access to information as the customer and the consumer that the companies do next slide please okay so let me get into our new tool which is actually a remake of an old tool i'm going to share my screen so that i can show it to you hopefully that's working now um okay so this lives on our website consumerfinance.gov where we have all kinds of of tools um like i said every topic every possible thing that you can do with your money we have information about it available to you and i'll go into a little bit more about our general resources later but i just wanted to show show you how easy it is to find stuff here um okay so this new tool is uh we've titled it find advice for your student loans and essentially we are trying to um as you can see in the chat right there's a ton of information out there and it all depends on what type of loan you have and what's your goal and all this stuff but you know the amount of information out there is just like an ocean's worth so we are trying to with this tool um based on a couple questions that you answer take you to the correct part of the ocean so to speak um so you're getting the information that is that is really relevant to you um so the first question we ask you here are kind of what's broadly the situation that you in that you are in um are you struggling with your payments are you in default um you know has your loan been sent to collections are you just starting out with your loans and you want to make sure that you're getting off on the right foot or are you kind of on cruise control you've been able to make your payments and you just want to make sure that you're you're doing things as intelligently and as efficiently as possible so i'm going to click here sorry about that that i'm struggling and then the next question that we'll ask you is what type of loans that you have because as you may have noticed in the chat um and the previous parts of this presentation the type of loan that you have can have a big impact on on what your options are so we cover federal loans federal parent plus loans because they do have some different options and then private education loans that's basically anything that's not a federal loan you can get it from a bank a credit union sometimes schools offer these loans sometimes non-profits states will offer them occasionally and um it can be a little bit confusing because um for instance uh someone was asking me about nelnet in the chat um or navient um and some of these players are both federal loan servicers meaning that they handle your payments and that you go to their website and they answer your questions when you have a phone call um but that's for your federal loan but then they also issue private loans so it can be a little bit confusing to know what you actually have um and then we also have a section for people who have a combination right a lot of people have both federal and private education loans um because the federal amount wasn't enough and so they took out private as well as i mentioned it's super common um to to not be totally confident what type of loans you actually have um so we have some options here too if you're not quite sure um what your situation is studentaid.gov will list all of your federal loans and then you can always get a free credit report at annualcreditreport.com and that will list all of your loans and hopefully make it easier for you to figure out if you have any private student loans okay so with all that preamble let me go ahead and actually open this up so you can see what it looks like so we're going to pretend that we have federal student loans and we are struggling to make our payments and we try to keep it really concise um so that you can see pretty quickly at a glance what your options are um there's gonna be a first step here which is kind of like the thing you should do immediately in this case that would be looking into income driven repayment which amy was just talking about the education department has a great loan simulator tool that will help you estimate what your payment will actually be on various plans and then we give you a little bit more information here about how idr works and then we also have some follow-up some additional information that once you've kind of done the most important steps some other things for you to consider one of those the pslf that she just mentioned um and let's see i'm gonna go back so it also says if you have another type of loan you can go back to the beginning and i wanted there were a lot of questions um in the chat about parent plus and so i wanted to show that one as well okay so parent plus zones like i said are are a little they have different ro rules of the road excuse me um then other federal loans do so we have some information here about the ways that they are different as well as some next steps to consider and let's see one thing i want to also show you we also have a gen kind of a general advice page on managing student loans here and i know there are a lot of questions about idr we have some more information here about the idr as well as for parent plus loans as i mentioned in the chat you have to consolidate in order to get into idr for parent plus so i didn't i don't want to get too much into the nitty gritty here i just wanted to mention those things because those questions were coming up in the chat and because idr is part of pursuing pslf um all right so that's basically that's the tool it's just those two quick questions and then hopefully the the information it takes youtube will be in of help and that's my bit can you yep so this is part of a larger um section on our website called paying for college we also have a tool there called grad path understand your financial aid offer that will help people who are trying to decide where to go to school what they can actually afford so i just wanted to mention that in case you have anyone in your life who is going to be making that decision soon next slide please and there's the link to that tool next slide please we also have a podcast called financial intuition it features interviews with students as well as financial aid professionals and financial coaches uh other people who study and follow student loan issues so that might be of help to you next slide please and then we have a bunch of other resources as well we have a mailing list where we can notify you about webinars and new materials we have a whole bunch of informational resources you can also get free hard copies of that material of a lot of these materials um and we uh have a huge faq bank called ask cfpb on a variety of topics um and we try to offer resources in multiple languages and we're working continuously to add more uh more languages next slide please and that's it um our mailing address is students at cfpb.gov and you can also uh you know reach out there if you have any questions or want to join her mailing list so i can help you do that thanks okay thank you kate um fantastic tool developed by the cfpb i know i had played around with the earlier version of the tool and um it was still very helpful um if you do as a student loan borrower if you do need assistance that's kind of a really great place to start as well um okay so now it's almost it's 12 12 47 here uh time for questions and there were a lot of questions um i was just kind of watching the chat and it's a little bit all over the place so let me see here here's a question and by the way any of the presenters here you're welcome to answer this question if you can if we can't answer this question we'll answer it offline if you live in another state when you went to college and took out loans but you now live in california does the student loan protect um does the california student loan programs apply to you so i'm assuming they mean the california student loan borrower bill of rights [Music] selena did you want to answer that one no um so again the question is if you live in other states when you went to college and took out loans but now you live in california does the california student loan programs apply to you in terms of programs a lot of these programs are federal programs so like the public service loan forgiveness program that's federal program idrs are all federal so you should be able to apply for those pretty easily consolidating your loan that's a federal thing but in terms of the california student loan borrower bill of rights i think as a california resident it also applies i'm not 100 sure but i do have a couple of subject matter experts um on my team and will help answer that one directly okay next question um does commercially held federal family education loan program loans also qualify for the payment pause and interest waiver um any of my panels want to answer that one the so does commercially held federal family education loans also qualify for payment pause and interest waiver so this one go ahead yeah i can help with this um so yes they can be covered as long as they are consolidated so if you consolidate your commercially held fell loans then they they will be eligible um you know both for the public service loan forgiveness program um the idr announcement that was made last week um so changes to the like the account adjustments that might that will happen um so the the key is consolidating your loans um if you have commercially held fill and want to take advantage of um the payment files and some of these other options okay thank you amy okay uh next question does the dfpi provide support for borrower defense cases in regards to schools that committed fraud um i don't know if our panels here can answer that we do have part of my staff we do or my staff are part of the dfpi um you know student loan servicer program we do uh they we do license and regulate the servicers selena did you want to answer yes um you can go ahead and contact me basically we will refer that to it's either the department of education or we can also refer um put you in touch with the bureau of private post-secondary education depending on the situation okay thank you celine you're welcome um here's another one our loans that have been in idr status for over 20 to 25 years now eligible for forgiveness are servicers supposed to let you know how many years you've been in idr repayment status it's an address question um so i can help put this on and if anyone else wants to chime in that would be great but um so this is exactly what we're seeking more guidance on from the department of education um it is supposed to be that the account adjustments will be automatic and so um you know people who have been in idr plans for 20 to 25 years yes you are supposed to only be in those programs for 20 25 years and the balance will be forgiven um but so this is what the the importance of the announcement last week that they are um reviewing all all accounts and making sure that people who have been in repayment for that long will get forgiveness um and so we are still awaiting um a lot of guidance on what that will actually look like but um yes that was what the announcement was about and um you know stay tuned so i imagine those those updates will be coming um very soon thank you amy uh selena i'm going to circle back to another question uh we had earlier so uh someone asked if that they lived in another state when they went to college and took out loans but now they live in california does the student loan borrower the california student loan borrower writes apply to them yes it excuse me yes it does so if they have any issues they could get in touch with us but yes okay fantastic thank you um uh here's another one let's see if you consolidate your loans will it invalidate past credit towards forgiveness and i think amy had talked about this already i do not believe it will it used to but i don't think that'll happen anymore amy clarify that's that's right so this is one of the problems with the original program as it as it was created um before when you consolidated your loans you lost any past credit towards forgiveness but under the special waiver period that exists only until october 31st 2022 if you consolidate your loans you will keep all of that passed credit towards forgiveness um yeah so thanks okay um here's a here's an interesting one um so this question this this person asked um they were deployed at some point and their loans were in forbearance for about a year while they were deployed um since they were deployed full-time with the army is their loans not loans i'm sorry is that time is is that i'm sorry it's kind of the question of the lord's place so they were deployed for a year working for the us army and so during that time in forbearance they weren't making payments are those those months qualifying towards public service loan forgiveness yes so when we talk about forbearances they're treated differently than military forbearances so um any time spent in military forbearances count towards pslf while um other periods of like voluntary forbearance are not counted the same way so the answer is yes thank you aim um okay uh hold on a second here is another question how do we find out how many qualifying payments we have especially when you have uh consolidated the original loan i okay i can just stay on camera too um so if you already have fed loan as your servicer and it sounds like you do since um you already consolidated your loan so if you already have a direct loan and your servicer is fed loan um you should be able to look on the dashboard on um you know the surfacer website to see how many qualifying payments you have so far um if you haven't consolidated yet and you haven't applied for pslf yet and um you're looking to do that during this current waiver period again that will happen on a rolling basis and the department of education does those in batches so there's no exact timeline for when that might happen but just you know stay vigilant and watch your account to make sure that you receive notifications from them great um two more for you amy there's a lot of questions about the public service loan forgiveness program uh number one is it true that loans can be forgiven if they are older than 20 years so yes in theory um income driven repayment plans were um you know created to to respond to this so if um you're in an income driven repayment plan no loan should be in existence for more than 20 or 25 years depending on the idr plan that you're in um and so again this is why the announcement last week is so important because there's this one-time audit that the department of education will do on all accounts to make sure that um borrowers are actually benefiting from um that that period of 20 to 25 years where your loans should be forgiven after afterward okay um one more for you if you consolidated your loan once are they precluded from being consolidated again so they're asking is if they consolidate their loan already and so maybe some time ago and they need to consolidate more maybe they went and got a another degree can you consolidate it again you know i'm actually not sure um i if anyone else on the panel would like to answer that question that would be great wait can you say the question again sorry i'm trying to read the chat and listen at the same time and i'm failing it's okay there's a lot of chat questions um so this is an interesting question if you consolidated your loan once are your loans precluded from being consolidated again so my assumption is no okay no as long as as long as you have mul as long as you still have multiple loans right so if if you have a single consolidation loan and that's your only loan you cannot consolidate the single consolidation loan because consolidation requires multiple loans to be brought into one um but for instance if you have two consolidation loans or if you have a consolidation loan and then another loan you can consolidate them um and there are some there are there are times and that makes sense to do that um i think the pslf waiver perhaps is one of those times actually because of that retroactive credit stuff if you're pursuing that um the one warning that we we tend to give though is that you want to think very hard before consolidating parent plus loans with any other type of federal loan um because parent plus loans have a lot more rules applied to them they don't qualify for as they only qualify for one idr plan and it's the least generous idr plan um and they're they just they get um they just get less preferential treatment by the legislation so you and once you consolidate with a parent plus loan it's kind of all parent plus fleet it's all treated as parent plus going forward um so that's that's the one thing you want to be really careful about is is not combining parent plus with other types of debt generally one and something oh sorry consolidation someone just asked will consolidating loans increase the interest rate it can slightly because what they do is a weighted average of your interest rates on your different loans and then they round to the nearest is it is in the nearest eighth um i'm a percent so it can end up going up uh very slightly amy i'm sorry what we're gonna say no that's okay i just wanted to make one other note on parent plus loans so just to repeat parent plus loans generally um do qualify you for pslf however they they were excluded from the current waiver period um but if you do have um you know the the concerns that kate mentioned were true about the idr plans and parent plus loans um but if you do have loans of your own and parent plus loans you could consolidate them together to benefit from the current waiver period if that's something that you're looking to do um so i just want to stick that as well wow that's actually really interesting i never thought about that before but um very thank you for that uh information also thank you for the question um one last one i know we're right at the hour and i think this one might be for you kate it's what age is considered older borrowers i think it was in one of your slides older borrowers oh i don't think it was in my slide was it you or was it may have been in my slide and i don't have a number for you but i can get that get that for you okay all good thank you selena okay so we're right at the hour um the last thing i'd like to do is just to remind everyone we do have a web page there's the link right there on the um on the screen uh if you have any i mean there's a it's all basically a collection of a lot of great resources for you at the very bottom again is a list of government agencies non-profits legal firms pro bono doing pro bono work and and providing services and systems just doing borrowers if you need any kind of help that's one of the best places to get started also be sure to subscribe to the dfpi um we have a newsletter we we email out um consumer alerts of all sorts of great information and finally if you do have any questions please feel free to email us our email address is right there outreach at dfpi.cn.gov if we cannot answer your question we will forward those questions on to our subject matter experts and our community network partners finally the the next webinar coming up is on may 1st at noon um it'll be a public service loan forgiveness workshop i'm going to try to walk everyone through the entire public service loan program and uh thank you it's the hour thank you for joining we had a great panel and we also had a lot of really great questions um please take care of yourself and take care of each other thank you bye thank you everyone you