7 Facts You Need to Know About Aidvantage Student Loans

Hey everybody, Dan Rooker with Student Loan Planner. If you have your loans at Navient or have previously had them at Navient or FedLoan or another loan servicer and they're now at Navient, then this video is for you. We're going to go over seven facts about Advantage student loans and how your services from Advantage may differ from your previous servicer. Before we get started, and if you haven't already done so, please like and subscribe to this channel. It really helps us get in front of other borrowers who may need this information. Okay, if you're still watching this, then odds are your loans are at Navient and they're on their way to Advantage or they're already there. And Advantage student loans, as a company, is a subsidiary of a larger student loan servicing company called Maximus Education. Not too long ago, December of 2021, Advantage began servicing loans from Navient and Navient has been transferring over to Advantage federally owned FFEL loans and direct loans, offloading its responsibilities as a federal loan servicer in preparation for whatever they're doing next. And in this video, we're going to go over seven facts you need to know about Advantage and how they could compare to Navient. Number one, a company within a company. Advantage is a subsidiary, like I said before, of Maximus Education. Maximus Education services federal loans that are in default. So if you think about that, a loan servicer that services loans in default and their customer service department, rebranded partly as Advantage, is now servicing your loans. And no matter what the education department officials say, that tells us a little bit about maybe the quality of service you get in customer service. Number two, things to look out for. So by now or coming up in the next couple of months, Advantage is going to send the group of borrowers that are moving from Navient to them a welcome letter. And in that welcome letter is going to be information about how to get logged in online, create your access to your online account, and how you can expect to communicate with them on a future basis to service your loans. Keep in mind, nothing will change as a result of this. You're still logging in to look at your loans, to make payments on your loans. It's just a different website and a different customer service team. So here's what's staying the same. Within your loan, the terms stay the same. So the length of the loan, the interest rate, and the other benefits that come with that federal loan. The loan account number is staying the same. Your username and password are actually staying the same, it's just a different website. And the customer service line that you've been calling to get in front of, to get on the phone with a Navient customer service representative is the same phone number. It's just it'll be a different team and a different brand, different name. Fact number four, a quick note on the educational materials from Advantage. If you go onto their website and you click through the links for the resources, it doesn't look to be a very robust set of tools and guides. Instead, when you click on the links on Advantage's website, those links go right to studentaid.gov, which tells us that there wasn't a whole lot of thought going into the development of tools and resources for borrowers. Instead, I would expect if you were a borrower seeking guidance from Advantage that the quality of those tools would be no different than you could find simply by going to studentaid.gov directly. Number five, if someone tells you or says that you can change your interest rate when you move from Navient to Advantage, don't believe them. Your interest rate was set by Congress when you took the loan out. It's not the same thing moving from Navient to Advantage as refinance your loans when you have an opportunity to negotiate the rate by making your rate competitive with another private lender. Your loans are still federal loans, the interest rate is staying the same, and don't believe anyone who says otherwise. Number six, not every loan is going to Advantage from Navient. If you have private loans at Navient or you have FFEL loans that are actually commercially backed instead of government backed, those loans will be staying at Navient. If you have a mixture of loans at Navient, you might end up getting two loan servicers. And number seven, if you've been sending checks to make payments on your loans at Navient, you'll still send those checks to the same address, but instead of saying, make this payable to Navient, you would actually make the check payable to Advantage. And if you are doing that, don't just start making checks payable to Advantage immediately. I'd wait until you get the welcome letter officially welcoming you to Advantage, letting you know that they're your loan servicer, and they should have in their correspondence the same address to send the checks payable to as well. Okay, last thing to know about Advantage in this move is that this move from Navient to Advantage isn't really going to change the loan process. It's mostly a name change. And if you've been happy or satisfied with your loan strategy, then that's not really going to change. It's just a matter of who you're making payments to in the end. So that's what I have for you guys today. Keep watching. The next video is what to do when your servicer's loan contract ends. And if you want to stay up to date on all things student loans, don't just subscribe to this channel. There's a link down in the comments for subscribing to our weekly newsletter. We don't do any spam. We don't take your information and sell it to another company. Just good, thoughtful information to stay up to date on the student loan verse. Until next time.