[Oasfaa] OU Begins Transmission of 07-08 Loan Certifications

Tue Apr 10 19:33:51 CDT 2007

Dear Lenders:

It's that time again.  We've done a transmission of a small batch of
07-08 Stafford Loan certifications yesterday and everything went
smoothly, so we're ready to start sending "mass quantities".  I'm
posting this message to both OASFAA-L and the OLAC listserv because I
don't want to miss anyone.  

If you're a school, this won't interest you...or maybe it will.
Keeping lenders informed like this is an important part of running a
smooth loan process and I encourage you to do the same.  

PLEASE SHARE THIS INFORMATION WITH YOUR PROCESSING FOLKS.  

Tonight, Jeffrey Chia (one of our wonderful IT guys)  will load
approximately 400 award responses to our FAMs system (students who
responded through March 30).  There is no way to know how many of those
400 had Stafford Loans in their packages or how many accepted them.
Those who accepted the offered amount of  Stafford loan will have a loan
record created and transmitted at approximately 4 a.m. on 4/11/07. 

So, it is possible up to 400 Stafford loans could be sent out tomorrow
a.m.  

On Friday 4/13, Jeffrey will load another  800 award responses, and
there will be loan records created and sent at 4 a.m. Saturday morning,
4/14.  We'll let you catch your breath and send another batch in the
early a.m. on Wednesday 4/18 and again on Saturday 4/21   Jeffrey will
keep doing that Wednesday/Saturday schedule until we get caught up
loading the 2400 award responses that are queued up (and of course, more
coming in every day).  Once we're caught up, the loans will start
transmitting every day as is our normal process.  

About 07-08 PLUS and Graduate PLUS Loans:  we just began loading PLUS
certification requests for 07-08 to our system.  Don't be concerned that
we haven't certified these yet and if your student or parent borrower is
told that we don't have a record of a PLUS cert, it's too soon to start
freaking out.  Let us get caught up first.  

Of course, now I need to share with you all our standard loan period and
disbursement dates for Summer 07 and Fall 07-Spring 08 (see attached).
Since we've been sending summer loans for a while, the summer dates are
no surprise.  Someone in your shop is bound to ask  "why do you
different disbursement dates for Stafford/Private and PLUS"?  Because
all of our PLUS Loans are disbursed via paper check by the ELM NDN, we
are allowed to request them up to 30 days prior to the start of the loan
period.  We take that maximum lead time so we have time to prepare all
those checks for mailing, confirming enrollment, etc.   

"Well, you get your private loans via paper check too, why aren't those
set 30 days prior to the start of the loan period?"  Because, while we
have regulatory grounds for holding paper PLUS checks (can't release
disbursements more than 10 days prior to the start date), there is no
such regulatory requirement for private loans. When we set private loan
disbursements to arrive 30 days prior, students began demanding their
private loan checks before our regular Title IV disbursement process was
set to begin.  Yes, the checks are legally theirs, but we haven't done
billing before that, so they'd want to have us figure out how much to
have them pay out of their private loan checks (might as well be sitting
in the corner with a quill pen and an abacus) OR they wouldn't pay
anything and then have difficulty later on because they spent the
private loan money on non-direct costs and didn't have enough $ for
tuition.  We resolved this problem by not letting the private loan
disbursements get here so early.  If the check isn't here, they can't
have it, right? 

LISTEN UP, THIS IS IMPORTANT:  If your origination system has OU set for
EFT disbursement of PLUS Loans because you transmit the funds to the NDN
via EFT, YOUR SYSTEM IS GOING TO HAVE A PROBLEM WITH OUR PLUS
DISBURSEMENT DATE, thinking it should be no more than 14 days prior to
the first day of the loan period.  Your origination folks will probably
have to do some kind of override to allow the loans to send to the NDN
as early as we want.  Be sure to alert them to this issue or you'll
start getting rejects on all our PLUS Loans.  THIS EMAIL IS YOUR
DOCUMENTATION THAT THESE FUNDS WILL ACTUALLY BE DISBURSED VIA PAPER
CHECK, NOT EFT.   Yes, these dates are legal, refer your folks to 34 CFR
668.167(a).  

Feel free to ask questions.  I'll see you all at OASFAA!!!

Pam McConahay 
Assoc. Dir., Compliance, Training & Lender Relations 
University of Oklahoma Financial Aid Services 
1000 Asp Avenue, Room 216 Norman OK 73019-4078
(405) 325-4617  Fax (405) 325-7608 
pmcconahay at ou.edu 

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T
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