ACS Student Loan

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ACS Student Loan

If you're a student seeking help with rising college costs, you've probably been told by the financial aid folks to make sure you apply for an ACS Student Loan. Well, maybe you've never heard of ACS and you're wondering what kinds of student loans they offer.

ACS Student Loan Background

If you do some research, you'll find the Affiliated Computer Services, Inc or ACS is a company that specializes in business process outsourcing (BPO) and technology outsourcing solutions. According to an ACS press release:

"The Education Services business of ACS provides outsourcing solutions to more than 1,000 colleges and universities, many of the largest lenders and secondary markets in the country, and over 8.7 million borrowers with outstanding loans totaling more than $101.4 billion. ACS is the primary contractor for the Department of Education's Direct Loan Program."

Additional Resources

When it comes to processing student loans, ACS provides what is called business process outsourcing. That is, because they are efficient in storing and processing college loan information, the US government has awarded ACS with a contract to administer a portion of their federal student loan program.

ACS Loan Process

The ACS website also indicates that they are a Fortune 500 company with 40,000 employees in 100 countries around the world. Many legislators are attempting to pass into law certain protections against BPO - in an attempt to keep those jobs here in the United States. But until that happens, ACS will continue to process and award student loans.

In any event, ACS can help the student apply for both Stafford and PLUS loans online. To apply for these student loans online, you must first complete the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) that is typically available from a high school or a college's financial aid office. About four weeks after that form is submitted, you should receive a Student Aid Report or SAR. That report will contain the FAFSA information along with the calculations of Expected Family Contribution.

This information will also be sent to the colleges and universities listed in your FAFSA form. Using this information, those financial aid offices will develop an Award Letter outlining the loan and direct aid information they are willing to offer the student.

Once you have those three items of information - a completed Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), the Student Aid Report (SAR) and the Award Letter, you can begin the ACS Student Loan process.

ACS Student Loan Offerings

When it comes to offerings, ACS is responsible for three different loan types of offerings dealing with college and / student loans. Each of these offerings is targeted to a different type of end user including:

Student / Parent Borrowers
Universities and Colleges
Financial Institutions

Each of these three offerings is discussed in more detail below.

ACS Loans for Student / Parent Borrowers

ACS provides both information access and servicing of student loans. All of these are easily accessible via online / website access. To use their website tools, a user has to register and create an account. Once completed the student or parent borrower has access to the following services:

ExpressPay - a web based solution that allows students and parent to service, or pay, for loans from the Federal Family Education Loan (FFEL) Program, Perkins Loans as well as Alternative Loans.
Account management services including verifying financial information, loan balances, payment history, and student loan interest rates.
Online applications for student loan deferments, forbearance or economic hardship deferments.
Email notifications of account status including processing of student loan payments.

ACS College / University Offerings

In much the same way that ACS provides outsourcing to the US government with respect to their student loan programs, ACS also provide colleges and universities the same benefits. After all, colleges should be in the business of providing its students with a quality education - that's one of their core strengths.

By outsourcing their non-strategic services to ACS, colleges and universities can dedicate more resources to providing their students with the education they deserve.

ACS and Financial Institutions

Finally, ACS considers itself a partner, not a competitor when it comes to financial institutions such as banks and other lending institutions. That's because ACS does not lend money directly to students, rather its focus is on partnering with lending institutions and providing loan servicing solutions.

ACS Technology for Lenders

As mentioned earlier, ACS offers a web-based self service approach to students, financial aid offices and can do the same for lenders. ACS offers lenders a start to finish approach to parent and student borrowers including: