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Office of Financial Aid
University of Mississippi

Private Lender Partner Policy

In an effort to assist Ole Miss Students and parents make informed choices; the Ole Miss Financial Aid Office annually designates certain lenders as “private lender partners” upon completion of a formal lender review process. In fact, our office has been conducting formal lender reviews on an annual basis since 1999.

The formal process of reviewing Private Student Loan providers is comprised of the following steps:

1) Both lender partners from the past academic year and new lenders requesting to be included as lender partners for the upcoming academic year must return a completed response to our written Request for Information (RFI) questionnaire by a stated date. A copy of our most recent questionnaire can be found here.

2) Upon receipt of all Private Loan RFIs, the Ole Miss Lender Review Committee convenes to thoroughly discuss each RFI submitted and determine the most competitive lenders based on RFI information such as:

  • Commitment to Electronic Loan Management (ELM)
  • Commitment to National Disbursement Network (NDN)
  • Pricing, Fees, and Interest Rate Ranges (as outlined in application solicitation disclosures)
  • Repayment Benefits
  • Co-borrower Release Options
  • Life-of-Loan Ownership
  • Life-of-Loan Servicing
  • Degree-Seeking Requirement
  • Satisfactory Academic Progress Requirement
  • Half-Time Status Requirement
  • Processing Reliability
  • Quality of Customer Service to Borrowers and our Office
  • Past Performance as a Lender Partner
  • Financial Stability
  • Long-term Commitment to Fund Loans to Ole Miss students

3) Our committee makes final decisions as to which lenders will be named as Private lender partners for the upcoming academic year and updated lender lists are posted on ELM Select.

To assist students and parents in choosing a lender for your private loan, the Financial Aid Office has compiled a list of nonaffiliated lenders.  Students and parents are encouraged to compare all loan products that best suits your eligibility and needs.  Borrowers may choose any lender of his/her choice and are not required to choose a lender from the Private Lender Partner List.

 

Essential Lender List Criteria:

  • Participates in electronic processing through ELM and the NDN
  • Demonstrates the ability to accurately process all student loans in a timely fashion
  • Produces a respectable loan approval rate among borrowers at Ole Miss each quarter
  • Provides outstanding customer service to borrowers
  • Provides a primary point of contact within their organization that is accessible to our staff in resolving any loan issues for our students.
  • Demonstrates the experience and financial stability to effectively originate and service loans
  • To our knowledge, offers Ole Miss Borrowers the same or lesser fees & interest rates and the same or more advantageous repayment benefits that they offer similar borrowers at other schools.

The Ole Miss Lender Review Committee must approve any new lender to the Private Lender Partner List. The Lender Review Committee consists of the Director of Financial Aid, Associate Director of Financial Aid, Assistant Director of Financial Aid, Senior Financial Aid Advisor, and a Financial Aid Advisor.