News Update

Student loan servicers told not to contact borrowers ahead of payment pause deadline

About a month ahead of the scheduled end to the moratorium on student loan repayment that’s been in place since March 2020, loan servicers have been instructed by the federal government in recent weeks to not contact borrowers about resuming payments, a trade group official told NBC News on Monday.

President Joe Biden has been considering whether to extend the moratorium again after the Aug. 31 deadline, while at the same time teasing the announcement of a student loan forgiveness plan. The Washington Post, in May, reported that Biden plans to cancel $10,000 in student debt for people who earned less than $150,000 the previous year, citing anonymous White House insiders. On the campaign trail, Biden pledged to cancel a minimum of $10,000 of student debt per person.

A White House official told NBC News that “no decision has been made” about whether to extend the deadline, but some speculate that the Department of Education’s instruction to loan servicers is a sign that the deadline will be extended past Aug. 31.