The 2016 presidential election is settled and a new administration will take office in two months’ time. Considering all that was said during this particularly contentious campaign, it’s no surprise that student loan borrowers are concerned about what that will mean to them beginning in 2017.
Two of the many items on my list of concerns have to do with the future of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, within the context of a potential repeal or overhaul of the Dodd-Frank legislation that created the consumer watchdog agency in the first place, and the Federal Direct Student Loan program, which the Obama administration established in 2010 as a successor to the simultaneously discontinued Federal Family Education Loan program.
The Possible Negatives
In the case of the CFPB, should Congress move to curtail the agency’s regulatory authority and/or impose more stringent oversight on its activities, I worry that less will be done to address loan-servicing-related problems, which include the misapplication of remittances on the part of private-sector administrators and their failure to promptly conduit financially distressed debtors into a government-sponsored payment relief program, or to prevent collection companies from pursuing past-due payments in a manner that violates the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. (You can see how your student loan repayments are impacting your credit by checking your two free credit scores, updated every 14 days, on Credit.com.)
As for the Federal Direct Loan program, a financial services industry that benefited from virtually risk-free income courtesy of the government-guaranteed FFEL program is probably getting pretty excited about the potential for its reincarnation, now that smaller-government-minded lawmakers are in control of all three branches of our system. And not just for the new loans that will be taken out in the future.
A Fresh Approach
At present, roughly one trillion dollars’ worth of Federal Direct Loans are currently on the books, plus another $200 billion to $300 billion in legacy FFELs.
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