Jaevion Nelson | Reform the Students’ Loan Bureau now

The Students’ Loan Bureau (SLB) seemingly has a penchant for frustrating potential and existing borrowers who depend on the agency for loans to obtain a degree at one of several tertiary institutions across the country. There is an urgent need for reform, but the agency is perhaps curiously wedded to the status quo that results in such difficulty to submit applications, obtain loan balances, and repay your loan.

Earlier this week, Nadeen Spence shared on the social media platform, Twitter, about a recent experience her niece had with the SLB.

According to her “the Students’ Loan Bureau is an incompetent organisation” and “their customer service is poor, and their agents are rude and dismissive”. She explained that although her niece and her (niece’s) mother travelled from Montego Bay twice to drop off documents, and both she and her son have assisted by dropping off documents as well, on separate occasions, the “SLB calls to ask for the same documents”.

The Students’ Loan Bureau began operations in 1970 and despite the challenges, a significant number of us have benefited from the agency. According to JIS, the “Bureau is Jamaica’s premier student loan financing organisation committed to ensuring that qualified, needy Jamaican students have equal access to financial assistance to pursue tertiary education”. In doing this, SLB contributes “to social mobility and nation-building”.

There are three types of loans provided by the SLB: Targeted, Pay As You Study (PAYS) and Postgraduate loan facilities. Between 2011-12 and 2015-16, 73,838 applications were received. Most of them were approved. The number of applications reduced over the time, but SLB’s Annual Report for 2015-16 suggests a number of factors, including affordable and manageable payment plans and an increase in scholarships.

Unfortunately, I could not access more recent information. However, according to the SLB, the number of applications submitted during 2015-16 totalled 13,620 and was 1,225, or 8.25 per cent, lower than the 14,845 submitted in 2014-15. The dollar value of the loans disbursed during the 2015-16 academic year amounted to $3.31 billion, compared to $3.46 billion for 2014-15, resulting in a decrease of $148.4 million, or 4.29 per cent.

A total of 12,928 students were approved for loans in 2015-16, compared to approximately 13,824 for 2014-15. This represents a decrease of 896 applicants, or 6.0 per cent. For the fiscal year 2015-16, a total of $3.598 billion was disbursed.

FRUSTRATING PROCESS

As a former borrower, I know first-hand how difficult it is to deal with the Students’ Loan Bureau. I went to university in 2004 and it wasn’t particularly easy to apply for the loan, get information or repay. The entire process, including repayment, which the agency depends on to make loans available to others, is frustrating.

It’s appalling that many years later, people still complain about some of the very same things. I remember my friends and I skipping school one day to travel from Clarendon early to get to the office to drop off our applications. In those days, it was a whole-day affair. Hundreds of people, a small office and long lines stretching all the way outside.

Things were fairly simple once we got the loan, but it was the servicing of the loan I found most daunting. It was difficult to get loan balances, statements were hardly ever shared, options for paying were surprisingly so few, and when your assigned officer changed, you weren’t informed. My friends had the same experiences.

A few persons responded to Spence’s tweets castigating the SLB.

One shared about the challenges faced when they attempted to get information via email. “Currently repaying and trying to get info on my status via email. After a few days the responses stopped and no follow-up. Had to go there to find out that person left the job and my case wasn’t reassigned. If I didn’t go it would have just stayed there,” they said.

Another said, “I travelled there 14 times one semester to check on the progress of my application. Only for them to tell me in November that the guarantors that I had been using for two years did not submit a copy of their ID and TRN for year 3.”

Earlier this year, a friend, a less aged borrower, wrote an article in Krash about the agency’s lack of innovation and customer-centricity, which, ironically, is incongruent with their core values (see https://krashtheculture.com/categories/social/slbs-lack-of-innovation-an...). He shared that “repaying SLB is perhaps the most painful experience” he’s had.

“To get my loan balance, I had to call the operator or email my loan officer who usually takes weeks to reply after multiple emails. They no longer provide quarterly financial statements. If you request it, you have to pay for it. If you took a postgrad loan, forget about a financial statement. They send you a little table in your email showing when you made payments. They have nothing to show you how your payments are contributing to reducing your loan balance,” he said.

The situation is dire but not insurmountable. The complaints are too many for decision-makers to ignore and allow the pace of change to progress slower than a snail.

I don’t know what the plans are, but the reform of the Students’ Loan Bureau is an imperative we cannot ignore.

As my friend said, “...improved customer satisfaction is the first step in improving transparency, accountability, and decreased delinquency in the SLB”.

Jaevion Nelson is a human -ights, economic and social justice and inclusive development advocate. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and jaevion@gmail.com, or tweet @jaevionn.