Expert Group

Something tells me that "prize" is out of our reach.

Here's what I got out of somebody from Wells Fargo (it reeks of corpro-speak):

We remain committed to serving the financial needs of students and families through responsible lending of student loan products and to our team members who serve these customers. Wells Fargo Education Finance Services will stop accepting federal (FFELP) loan applications effective June 23, 2010. We will continue to offer private student loan products and to service the accounts of our existing federal and private loan customers with best-in-class customer service.

As a business, we’ve anticipated this change and prepared for this outcome for some time. Over the past several years, we’ve worked hard to re-engineer the business from a federal and private loan model to a private-only student lending origination model.

Our Education Financial Services team members and the communities where they work can rest assured that our presence will remain strong. We have a lot of opportunity for continued growth including:

• There is still a need for additional funding beyond the government guarantee loan amount, and college costs continue to rise. For the most part, government guaranteed loans provide less than $7500 in funding for college costs, far below the amount the typical student requires.
• Wachovia was not marketing private student loans to its customers, nor were the sales representatives offering private loans to colleges and universities for their students in need. This represents a significant opportunity to offer our EFS products and services to a large number of colleges in Wachovia markets.
• Internal Wells Fargo and Wachovia referrals remain a major source of opportunity growth. The new Wells Fargo has relationships with 1 out of 3 households in the United States, a fabulous opportunity for future referrals.
• Over time, we also will have the opportunity to bring servicing in house, which would lead to job creation.

Hope this helps!

Lisa Westermann

Assistant Vice President, Public Relations

Card Services and Consumer Lending

Wells Fargo & Company