March 10, 2011

DL Transfer Update

In a Jan. 13 announcement, ED reported the successful transfer of approximately 1.2 million Direct Loan (DL) borrower accounts to new federal loan servicers. Due to ED’s original placement of loans with its four servicers, many borrowers found themselves working with multiple loan holders. The purpose of this transfer was to correct the issue by placing those borrowers with one servicer. The transfer corrected the issue for most borrowers; however, ED stated “a very small number of cases” still have multiple servicers and that they’ll continue transfer work. The latest round of transfers should be completed this month.

During this transfer, some DL borrowers were incorrectly entered into NSLDS as paid-in-full (PF) and documented as having zero ($0) outstanding principal and interest balances (OPB and OIB). ED corrected the data in NSLDS and corrected the ISIRs as of Jan. 18. Schools can identify the affected ISIRs, which:

• Are sent under the ‘IGSG11OP’ or ‘IGSG12OP’ message class; or
• Include an NSLDS Postscreening Reason Code ’99‘ and a CPS-processed date of Jan. 18 - Jan. 21, 2011.

Additionally, timing issues resulted in a delay in making new loan and loan disbursement information available in NSLDS. ED is in the process of resolving this issue and states that this information is accurately reflected in the COD system and accessible on the COD website.

Schools that have questions about an affected registered student (including transfer students) may contact COD at 800.848.0978 or CODSupport@acs-inc.com.

Students or parents affected by this data transfer delay may contact the new federal loan servicer listed on the letter they received when the transfer process was complete. Contact information can also be found on the Loan Servicing Centers for Schools Contact Information page on the IFAP website.