Great Lakes College Corp. is just one of seven business that service federal loan financial obligation by accumulating as well as tracking repayments. If Great Lakes is your student loan servicer, right here’s what it can assist you do.
Register for on the internet access to your account. Once you have access you can speak to Great Lakes, access your regular monthly payment declarations and also pay costs.
Sign up in autopay. Great Lakes Student Loans can subtract your repayments immediately from your checking account. Signing up for autopay will certainly decrease your rate of interest by 0.25 portion point.
Register for income-driven repayment. You can request income-driven payment, which restricts your student loan payments to a percent of your income, by completing a paper kind with Great Lakes. (You can apply online on studentaid.gov and after that recertify your earnings yearly online as well.).
Process deferment as well as forbearance requests. Great Lakes can help you temporarily stop paying or lower your settlement quantity if you qualify. This assists you remain in excellent standing to avoid default. However throughout any periods of deferment or forbearance, interest can continue to develop.
Process monthly repayments and added repayments. Great Lakes will certainly track and also collect your payments. If you want to make added repayments, you can advise Great Lakes (online, by phone or by mail) to use extra payments to your existing equilibrium. Otherwise, it might use the additional amount to following month’s payment instead.
” MORE: Trainee loan servicers: That are they and also what do they do?
Your loan servicer is appointed by the U.S. Division of Education and learning when your loan is paid out to your university for the very first time. The name of the company sending you a government loan expense monthly is your servicer. If your loan repayments haven’t started or you’re uncertain which firm is your servicer, log in to My Federal Pupil Aid to find out. You can likewise connect with any one of the loan servicer call facilities by calling 1-800-4-FED-AID.
Servicers are there to help you, but they might provide choices that are best for the firm, not the consumer. That suggests they can’t transform how repayments are refined and also may not suggest one of the most useful repayment choice for you. It’s crucial to understand your repayment options so you can understand the best concerns to ask.
If Great Lakes reported your account in error throughout car forbearance.
Almost 5 million borrowers whose federal trainee loans are serviced by Great Lakes may have seen their credit history dip due to the fact that their financial obligations were wrongly reported to the significant credit bureaus during the automated six-month forbearance that began in March 2020.
Your stopped settlements might have been reported as “postponed” as a result of a coding mistake. The stopped payments must have been reported as if you had made them. If you were current when forbearance began, for example, the standing ought to be “existing.”.
Deferred condition is not a racking up element under FICO credit rating solutions, the ones most frequently made use of to make loaning choices. However deferred standing can reduce the credit history generated by VantageScore solutions– the scores most generally used absolutely free to customers as a method to track their credit report.
Great Lakes states it is collaborating with credit scores reporting firms to fix the inaccuracies. Once the information on the underlying credit score report is appropriate, credit report should be untouched.
Consumers need to examine their credit report reports from each of the 3 credit reporting bureaus at AnnualCreditReport.com, the cost-free, government-run website.
Great Lakes asks that borrowers contact it directly if their credit scores reports are incorrect. Call 800-236-4300. Obtain a lot more information on contacting Great Lakes customer service or making an issue below.
Am I stuck with Great Lakes till my loans are repaid?
Loans are in some cases transferred from one servicer to another by the Division of Education and learning.
The Division of Education is preparing to move the trainee loan servicing landscape by signing new servicing contracts with 5 firms to at some point take control of all loan servicing. That implies your loan servicer is most likely to alter. Great Lakes is set up to proceed servicing loans through December 2023.
Before servicing contracts finishing, borrowers should do the following:.
Download and save your settlement history from your online account or request a copy from your servicer.
Update your call details with your latest address, contact number and also email address.
You’ll be notified when a loan maintenance transfer happens, and you’ll handle payments with the brand-new servicer. All servicers deliver the very same options as well as programs, however customer support might vary from one to another.