Navient Overview

Navient

Introduction

Navient (originally called Student Marketing Association which was nicknamed Sallie Mae.) is a publicly traded American cooperation was established in the year 1973, it is based in Wilmington, Delaware, United States of America. Navient is the second major federal student loan servicer. This company services and collects federal and private student loans. The company was sponsored by the government although it was created by Congress. The company is run by the following:

John (Jack) F. Remondi who is the President and CEO

Joe Fisher as the Chief Financial Officer

Steve Hauber as the Chief Risk and Compliance

Officer

Patricia Christel as Chief of staff

Mike Smith as Chief Human resources Officer

Mike Maier as Chief Information Officer

Jennifer Walker as Chief Audit Officer and;

John Kane as Group President, Business

Processing Solutions

However, Navient has a stock price of US $13.19 – 0.50

(-3.65%), a revenue of 5.18 billion USD as of the year 2017, and a total asset

of $146.4 billion as of the year 2015. Navient has over six thousand, seven hundred (6700) employees as of the year 2017

Moreover, the objective of this company is to increase

the value of loans, thereby reducing costs to borrowers. The company was to

collect student loans in the secondary market and convert them into marketable

securities. In the year 1997, Sallie Mae began its privatization, it

became a private sector in the year 2004 and had an independent board. Navient,

in the year 2013, announced its plans to split into two publicly traded

companies, an education loan management business named Navient and a consumer

banking business that would retain the name, Sallie Mae. In the year

In 2015, the company was recognized by 2020 Women’s on Boards in which it

discussed gender diversity on its board of directors.

Furthermore, the student loan borrowers filed a lawsuit

against Navient in the year 2021; this was aimed at making the company go

bankrupt, later on, a settlement of approximately one point nine billion

dollars ($1.85 billion) was announced between Navient and the student loan

borrowers. Navient announced its plan on ceasing to service federal student

loans on the 28th of September, 2021, their plan was approved by the Department

of Education in October, 2021and the company transferred its federal loan over

to Aidvantage. The company canceled over $1.7 billion of debt to resolve

allegations of unfair, predatory, and deceptive practices loans.

In the same vein, Navient also has companies under it

some of its subsidiaries which are:

Ducan Solutions

 This company offers

full-service parking solutions and end-to-end tolling solutions to improve

clients’ revenue, the company has its headquarters in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, The United States, with annual revenue of over $55 million

Municipal Services Bureau (MSB)

This company functions as a telecommunication company, the company offers outsourced

third-party debt collection and call center services to government entities

nationwide, it is based in Austin, Texas, United States, raising nearly $71

million as revenue.

·

Navient Portfolio Management

According to the company’s website, they are proven experts in managing the accounts receivable vertical supply chain and maximizing outcomes within a superior compliance environment, they are based in Wilmington, Delaware, United States, with $2.7 billion as generated revenue as of 2020.

Xtend Healthcare

This company delivers results in revenue cycle management (RCM), it is a medical billing service, it is based in Hendersonville, Tennessee, United States, with $70 million as

revenue generated as of 2015 and 1300 employees.

Navient BPO (Business Process Outsourcing)

This company is one of the subsidiaries of Navient and has supported over 10

Million of its customers, also based in Wilmington, Delaware, United States,

With over 5600 full-time employees.

Pioneer Credit Recovery, Inc.

This company provides services to the government

clients and consumers with expertise in debt recovery through experience and

leadership, it is based on East Coast, the United States of America, it is a profit organization, the company has generated $600 million as revenue, with over 900 employees.

In addition, Navient was reviewed by its users as of May, 2022 and got a rating of

3.9/5 with a total of 453 ratings, their customers complained about an

increment of their debts, inefficiency, and other complaints of the company not

being flexible enough. Customers also complained about their customer service

because of the delay of approximately 30 minutes, it was also said by a

a customer that the company profits off people trying to enrich themselves, although

other customers commended its student loans. The customer service review can be

said to be neutral as the number of appraisals equals the number of complaints.

Navient was charged with a lot of lawsuits and controversies but they were

all investigated properly and settled:

·

To start with, the Consumer Financial Protection

Bureau, which has been investigating the company for over two years, sent the

the company a letter telling its executives that the agency’s enforcement staff had

found enough evidence to indicate the company violated consumer protection

laws, and this happened in August 2015.

The united states Department of Justice

announced that nearly 78000 military service members would begin receiving $60 million in compensation for being charged excess interest on theirstudent loans by Navient. The company sought for this settlement to resolve the federal government’s lawsuit alleging the company’s violation of the rights of

service members eligible for benefits and protection under the Service Members

Civil Relief Act (SCRA)

On March 14, 2016, Senator Elizabeth

Warren gave a speech in Congress qualifying Navient’s service and

subsequent contract award by the Department of Education as “an outrageous

fiasco”. Warren

recommended “a total reform of student

loan servicing to make sure that nothing as the Navient

disaster ever happens again”.

In June 2016, stockholders filed a class action lawsuit against

Navient. The plaintiffs included Chicago police officers and retired city

employees in Providence, Rhode Island.

On July 5, 2016, Guy Micciche filed a complaint against Navient

in U.S. District Court alleging that the debt

collector contacted the plaintiff, several times, on his cellular phone using

an automated dialing system. In the complaints, the plaintiff alleged that he

told Navient to stop calling him, but that the company persisted.

On January 18, 2017, the CFPB, along

with the Attorneys General of Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Washington,[35] filed

a complaint against Navient in the United States District Court for the Middle

District of Pennsylvania alleging violations of the Fair Credit Reporting Act and Fair Debt Collection Act. It

alleged that Navient “systematically and illegally [failed] borrowers at every stage of repayment” with “abusive interest charges, hurting  disabled military veterans by making inaccurate reports to credit companies about them and making repayments harder than necessary.” According to the court filing,

It was said that:

Navient has failed to perform its core duties in the servicing

of student loans, violating Federal consumer financial laws…

Navient systematically deterred numerous borrowers from

obtaining access to some or all of the benefits and protections associated with

these plans [plans limiting repayment based on income]. Despite assuring

borrowers that it would help them find the right repayment option for their

circumstances, Navient steered these borrowers experiencing financial hardship

that was not short-term or temporary into costly payment relief designed for

borrowers experiencing short-term financial problems, before or instead of

affordable long-term repayment options that were more beneficial to them in light

of their financial situation.

For borrowers who did enroll in long-term repayment plans,

Navient failed to disclose the annual deadline to renew those plans,

misrepresented the consequences of non-renewal, and obscured its renewal notice

to borrowers who were due for renewal. As a result, the affordable payment

amount expired for hundreds of thousands of borrowers, resulting in an

immediate increase in their monthly payment and other financial harm.

Navient also misreported information to consumer reporting

agencies about thousands of borrowers who were totally and permanently

disabled, including veterans whose total and permanent disability was connected

to their military service, by making it appear as if those borrowers had

defaulted on their student loans when they had not, damaging their credit; misrepresented one of its requirements for borrowers to release their cosigner

from their private student loan, thereby denying or delaying access to an

an important feature on many cosigned private loans that relieves a cosigner of

responsibility for the loan once the borrower meets certain eligibility

criteria; and repeated the same errors in processing federal and private

student loan borrowers’ payments month after month, even after borrowers

complained to Navient about those errors.”

The company released a public statement and

fact sheet denying

the allegations and calling them politically motivated and harmful to

borrowers.

From at least 2011, up to 2017, “tens of thousands”

of complaints were filed against Navient. In

2017, 6,708 federal complaints were filed about the company, in addition to

4,185 private complaints – more than any other student loan lender.

In 2018, it was revealed that Navient had attempted to collect

loans from co-signers after a student’s accidental death.

Navient was also sued by the American Federation of Teachers (AFT)

for allegedly failing to divert teachers into public forgiveness

plans.

Former Attorney General of Louisiana Charles

C. Foti, Jr. and the law firm of Kahn Swick & Foti announced that they had

started investigating Navient. The investigation is focusing on whether

Navient’s officers and/or directors breached their fiduciary duties to

Navient’s shareholders or otherwise violated state or federal laws. In 2019, Navient’s lending practices were the subject of an

an episode of Michael Lewis’s “Against the

Rules” podcast.

In 2021, it was reported that the US Department of Education had ordered Navient to pay $22.3 million in a decades-old scandal involving Navient’s former parent company, Sallie Mae. The company was accused of overcharging the US government. In the same year, the company also faced a class action lawsuit filed in New Jersey by stockholders who alleged they were injured by its scheme of steering borrowers into more lucrative forbearance status rather than pointing them toward income-driven repayment plans.