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ED Officially Opens Solicitation for Student Loan Servicing Platform

By Allie Bidwell, NASFAA Senior Reporter

The Department of Education on Tuesday published a solicitation for a federal student loan servicing platform, opening the bidding process to companies that wish to develop the new system.

The procurement documents outline nine components to be included in the new system, dubbed the NextGen Financial Services Environment. ED would require the system to have, for example, a fully digital platform, a contact center and customer relationship management platform, a data management platform, a component to manage cybersecurity and data privacy, and more.

ED announced in August that it was halting plans put in motion by the Obama administration to overhaul the federal student loan servicing system, and said the new system would be in place before contracts with the agency's nine loan servicing companies expire in 2019.

The new system is intended to be more consumer-friendly, and may result in one or more servicers handling the monthly payments of more than 40 million federal student loan borrowers. The documents, however, said ED will accept proposals for individual, multiple, or all components.

"To enable a world-class customer experience, FSA intends to procure an enterprise-wide, FSA-branded omni-channel digital platform featuring a mobile-first, mobile-complete, and mobile-continuous solution," the procurement documents said. "The digital platform will be FSA's 'digital front door' for all customer journeys. To realize this vision, the digital platform will consolidate the multiple websites, mobile applications, and contact centers that currently exist across the full customer lifecycle (from application to servicing and default)."

The solicitation will be open for responses until 3:00 p.m. EST on April 6, 2018.

 

Publication Date: 2/22/2018


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