Press Release
Enhanced Exit Counseling Benefits Now Available for Borrowers and Schools Offered through Cooperative Effort Between National Student Clearinghouse and Great Lakes Education Loan Services, Inc.
HERNDON, VA, JULY 18, 2002 - The National Student Clearinghouse, the nation's largest, most trusted source for post-secondary student degree and enrollment verification services, is pleased to announce a new exit counseling benefit for borrowers and schools. Using existing Clearinghouse indexing technology, student loan organizations can now assist financial aid professionals in identifying a student borrower's multiple loan holders during the actual exit counseling process. This process is similar to the Clearinghouse's cooperative efforts with Mapping-Your-Future, an exit counseling organization sponsored by the FFEL community.
Through continuous participation and ongoing support from the student loan providers, the Clearinghouse maintains the most comprehensive borrower index in the student loan industry. Currently, the Clearinghouse is able to identify 100% of outstanding FFEL guarantor and Direct Loan accounts, 95% of the nation's FFEL-serviced and private loan accounts, and 80% of all Perkins loans. Due to this extensive participation by student loan industry organizations, the Clearinghouse has been chosen as the initial index used by Meteor when the initiative goes into production this summer. It will be the Meteor-related technology that will drive the enhanced exit counseling benefits.
"The breadth and depth of our mature index capability allows us to provide value to the industry in many ways. Contributing to an important borrower default aversion service, by utilization of our index, is another way that the Clearinghouse can serve schools and borrowers. We thank our student loan partners for their support in providing this valuable link to their data," said Dan Boehmer, president, National Student Clearinghouse.
Among the first to use this Meteor-related indexing methodology for exit interview purposes is Great Lakes Educational Loan Services, Inc., an affiliate of Great Lakes Higher Education Corporation. Initially, Great Lakes will counsel the borrower by providing them with the locations of their loans using the Clearinghouse index. Additionally, Great Lakes will access detailed loan information from its own internal systems by using Meteor technology. As adoption of Meteor by the student loan industry continues, loan information from others in the industry will be provided to authenticated borrowers through the Great Lakes process.
"Use of the Clearinghouse index provides a valuable component to our exit counseling product. We believe displaying loan location information, and later total borrower indebtedness, is an essential part of the exit counseling process. It is at this exact point that borrowers may be confused and need assistance as to where their loans are located, and how much they owe. Use of the Clearinghouse index, and soon Meteor technology, will allow us to obtain this information directly without the need of an intermediary to support real-time communication," said Richard Severson, executive vice president for marketing and sales of Great Lakes Educational Loan Services.
About the National Student Clearinghouse
The National Student Clearinghouse, a non-profit organization founded by the higher education community, streamlines the student record verification process for colleges and universities, students and alumni, lending institutions, employers, and other organizations. The Clearinghouse maintains a comprehensive electronic registry of student records that provides a single, automated point-of-contact for organizations and individuals requiring timely, accurate verification of student enrollment, degree, and loan data.
Today, over 2,700 colleges, representing 91% of the nation's enrollment, participate in the Clearinghouse. Student loan providers, employers, student credit issuers, student health insurance providers, the federal government and others access the Clearinghouse's registry over 100 million times annually to conduct electronic student record verifications.
For more information about the National Student Clearinghouse, visit www.studentclearinghouse.org.
About the Great Lakes Educational Loan Services, Inc.
Great Lakes Educational Loan Services, Inc. is the service provider for the Great Lakes Higher Education Corporation's affiliated group of companies, one of the nation's largest integrated providers of student loan services. The affiliated group currently interacts with some 2,300 schools and 1,200 lenders in all fifty states, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The group's affiliated guarantor, Great Lakes Higher Education Guaranty Corporation, is the designated guarantor for Minnesota, Ohio, Wisconsin, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The group holds guarantees on $15 billion in FFEL program loans and services student loans with an aggregate outstanding balance of more than $9.5 billion for approximately 1,100,000 borrowers. Great Lakes is headquartered in Madison, Wisconsin and has operating centers in Columbus, Ohio and St. Paul, Minnesota and customer service and development sites in Eau Claire and Boscobel, Wisconsin and Oakbrook, Illinois. Great Lakes' mission is assurance of cost-effective enablement of educational access.
Press Inquiries:
Kathleen Dugan
Marketing Director
703-742-4208
dugan@studentclearinghouse.org
