In a bid to tackle over-repayments, the Student Loans Company is urging customers to switch to Direct Debit in the final months of paying their student loan and to ensure their contact information is up to date, including bank account information.
In the last financial year, over 31,000 customers made unnecessary over-repayments at the end of their loan. This resulted in over £19 million being overpaid to SLC. Over-repayments are entirely avoidable if customers switch to Direct Debit at the end of their loan term. Almost £16 million of these over-repayments have already been refunded to customers but this is only possible by ensuring contact information is up to date, including bank account information.
SLC writes to every customer as they enter the final two years of repayment inviting them to switch to Direct Debit to avoid over-repaying, however, more than 75% of customers choose to continue paying through salary deductions.
To make receiving a refund even easier, in March, SLC started automatically refunding customers with up to date information. Since its introduction, SLC has automatically refunded over £4 million to customers who have not joined the Direct Debit scheme and have not yet claimed a refund. This is possible for customers when SLC hold up to date
