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DOCUMENT SUMMARY: Under section 459A of the Higher Education Act of 1965, as amended (``HEA''), as enacted within the Ensuring Continued Access to Student Loans Act of 2008 (Pub. L. 110227), the Department of Education (``Department'') has the authority to purchase, or enter into forward commitments to purchase, Federal Family Education Loan Program (``FFELP'') loans made under sections 428 (subsidized Stafford loans), 428B (PLUS loans), or 428H (unsubsidized Stafford loans) of the HEA, on such terms as the Secretary of Education (``Secretary''), the Secretary of the Treasury, and the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (collectively, ``Secretaries and Director'') jointly determine are ``in the best interest of the United States'' and ``shall not result in any net cost to the Federal Government (including the cost of servicing the loans purchased).''
This notice (a) establishes the terms and conditions that will govern the loan purchases made under section 459A of the HEA, (b) outlines the methodology and factors that have been considered in evaluating the price at which the Department will purchase loans made under section 428, 428B, or 428H of the HEA, and (c) describes how the use of those factors and methodology will ensure that the loan purchases do not result in any net cost to the Federal Government. The Secretaries and Director concur in the publication of this notice and have jointly determined that the programs described in this notice are in the best interest of the United States and shall not result in any net cost to the Federal Government (including the cost of servicing the loans purchased).
SUMMARY: Federal Family Education Loan Program (FFELP),
DOCUMENT BODY 2:
Federal Family Education Loan Program (FFELP)
The purchasing of loans is intended to encourage eligible FFELP lenders to provide students and parents access to Stafford and PLUS loans for the 20082009 academic year. To accomplish this objective, the Department is offering lenders the opportunity to participate in a Loan Purchase Commitment Program (``Purchase Program'') and a Loan Participation Purchase Program (``Participation Program'') (collectively, ``Programs'').
Under the Loan Purchase Commitment Program, the Department may purchase eligible loans that are held by eligible lenders. To participate in the Purchase Program, each eligible lender must enter into a Master Loan Sale Agreement with the Department and deliver to the Department or its agent the fully executed master promissory note (or all electronic records evidencing the same) evidencing each eligible loan that the eligible lender wishes to sell to the Department and any and all other documents and computerized records relating to such eligible loans.
Under the Loan Participation Purchase Program, the Department may
purchase participation interests in eligible loans that are held by an
eligible lender acting as a sponsor under a Master Participation
Agreement. To participate in the Participation Program, each sponsor must enter into a Master Participation Agreement with the
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Department and a thirdparty custodian acceptable to the Department and
must have provided appropriate notice to the Department of the intent to participate in the Loan Purchase Commitment Program.\1\
\1\ Lenders that qualify as ``eligible notforprofit holders''
for a higher special allowance rate may sell participation interests
in their loans under this program without loss of eligibility for
that rate. An entity qualifies for that rate only if the entity is
the ``sole beneficial owner of such loan.'' 20 U.S.C. 1085(p)(2)(C).
Courts treat a participation interest in a loan as a beneficial
ownership of a loan. The Department becomes a beneficial owner of a
loan in which it purchases a participation interest, and the lender
then holds a junior beneficial ownership interest. In light of other
statutory provisions and the congressional intent they evidence, the
Department interprets the HEA to disqualify an otherwiseeligible notforprofit holder only if a forprofit entity acquires
beneficial ownership of a loan. See 20 U.S.C. 1085(p)(2)(B), (E), (3).
Pursuant to section 459A of the HEA, the Secretaries and Director establish the terms and conditions that will govern the Loan Purchase Commitment Program (``Loan Purchase Commitment Program Terms and Conditions,'' attached as Appendix B to this notice) and the terms and conditions that will govern the Loan Participation Purchase Program (``Loan Participation Purchase Program Terms and Conditions,'' attached as Appendix C to this notice). The Loan Purchase Commitment Program Terms and Conditions and the Loan Participation Purchase Program Terms and Conditions are collectively referred to as the ``Terms and Conditions.'' (The Notice of Intent to Participate, referenced in the Terms and Conditions, is attached as Appendix D to this notice.) Outline of Methodology and Factors in Determining Prices
In accordance with Public Law 110227, the goal in structuring the Purchase Program and the Participation Program described in this notice is to maximize student loan availability while ensuring loan purchases result in no net costs to the Federal Government. These programs will offer temporary liquidity to FFELP lenders at prices that will encourage their continued participation in the FFELP. This notice responds, in particular, to the requirement in section 459A of the HEA for an outline of the methodology and factors considered in evaluating the price at which loans may be purchased, and describes how the use of such methodology and consideration of such factors will ensure that no net cost to the Federal Government results from the loan purchases under these programs.
Servicing and Financing Costs. In determining the prices described
in this notice, the Secretary and the Secretary of the Treasury
analyzed the costs incurred in making FFELP loans by large and small
lenders, forprofit and notforprofit lenders, and national and
regional lenders based on publicly available data and consultations
with a number of lenders and financial market analysts. This analysis
examined lender returns in the context of loan servicing and financing
expenses associated with obtaining funding to pay program costs and finance actual loan disbursements.
Based on this background information, the Secretaries and Director determined that setting the price paid by lenders on a participation interest in a loan at the principal of that loan and the commercial paper rate plus 50 basis points would offer most lenders sufficient opportunity to continue their participation in the FFELP. Setting a higher price risks limiting participation to only the largest lenders, while offering a lower price would be overly generous, especially for those same large lenders.
Origination and Deconversion Costs. In addition to servicing and financing costs, lenders incur administrative costs to originate loans and remove or ``deconvert'' loans from their servicing systems. In determining the proper price to reimburse lenders for these costs, the Department and the Department of the Treasury analyzed information from lenders and servicers.
The Department and the Department of the Treasury consulted with lenders, who provided them with their estimated origination and deconversion costs. Larger, more efficient lenders indicated that their origination costs ranged between $20$30 per loan while these costs for smaller lenders were $75 per loan. Lenders indicated that their estimated deconversion costs (i.e. the costs resulting from the process of taking a loan from one lender's servicing system and transferring it to another servicing system) ranged from $20$50 per loan.
To ensure the Participation Program is open to more than just the largest lenders, the Secretaries and Director used these estimates to establish a flat $75 fee paid on each loan sold to the Department to cover all servicing, origination, and deconversion costs. This assumes the lower end of the origination cost range and the higher end of the deconversion costs range.
Pricing structures on many private servicing contracts tend to have
costs that differ greatly for different services, with high origination
costs and relatively low deconversion costs, or at times, the converse.
Notwithstanding these differences, the Secretaries and Director are
reasonably certain that the $75 fee accounts for these variations [[Page 37424]]
while ensuring adequate participation in the Participation Program. Analysis of Cost Neutrality
The costneutrality analysis used credit subsidy cost estimation
procedures established under the Federal Credit Reform Act of 1990
(Pub. L. 101508) and OMB Circular A11. These procedures entail
performing various analyses, projecting cash flows to and from the
Government, and discounting those cash flows to the point of
disbursement; the analysis also used the Credit Subsidy Calculator
(``OMB calculator''), developed by the Office of Management and Budget
to estimate credit subsidy costs for all Federal credit programs, as
the discounting tool.\2\ The results of the analysis were subsidy rates
that reflect the Federal costs associated with a loan; these costs are
expressed as a percentage of the credit extended by the loan. For
example, a subsidy rate of 10.0 percent indicates a Federal cost of $10 on a $100 loan.
\2\ The OMB calculator takes projected future cash flows from
the Department's student loan cost estimation model and produces
discounted subsidy rates reflecting the net present value of all
future Federal costs associated with loans made in a given fiscal
year. Values are calculated using a ``basket of zeros'' methodology
under which each cash flow is discounted using the interest rate of
a zerocoupon Treasury bond with the same maturity as that cash
flow. To ensure comparability across various Federal credit
programs, this methodology is incorporated into the calculator and
used governmentwide to develop estimates of the Federal costs of credit programs.
The metric to determine cost neutrality was that costs under the new Programs should not exceed costs expected under the FFELP had the loan purchase authority in section 459A of the HEA not been enacted. Thus all costs were compared to estimates in the 2009 President's Budget for the FFELP, after adjustments were made for enacted legislation (other than the loan purchase authority provided by Pub. L. 110227), including administrative costs.
Student loan cost estimates were developed to assess the Federal cost incurred for loans financed for students in five categories: Students attending proprietary schools, students attending twoyear schools, freshmen/sophomores at fouryear schools, juniors/seniors at fouryear schools, and students in graduate programs. Risk categories have separate assumptions based on historical patternsfor example, the likelihood of default or the likelihood of statutory deferments or discharge benefitsof borrowers in each category. The analysis also considered risk factors that are particular to the new programs, such as the likelihood that lenders involved in loan participation agreements file for bankruptcy protection.
This discussion outlines the analysis of the new Purchase Program
and Participation Program with respect to the following critical aspects affecting the Federal cost:
[cir] Administrative costs;
[cir] Borrower behavior;
[cir] Lender behavior; and
Administrative Costs. Under the Federal Credit Reform Act, Federal administrative costs are not included in credit subsidy cost calculations. However, to capture the full cost of the Purchase Program and Participation Program, section 459A of the HEA requires the determination of cost neutrality to include total costs, including Federal administrative costs that are subject to appropriation, and thus administrative costs were estimated and included in the cost neutrality analysis. Administrative cash flows primarily involve servicing costs associated with loans purchased by the Department. These costs extend for up to 40 years, because servicing must continue until the last loan is paid in full. Administrative costs also include startup costs to enhance the Department's systems to accommodate the purchase of participation interests and any put FFELP loans. Other startup costs include legal and technical advisory contracts and changes to Department accounting, reporting, and program compliance systems and processes.
For the new programs, the Secretaries and Director estimated that startup costs would be $15.7 million and servicing costs would vary, according to the amount of volume in the program. Estimates for start up costs were derived from conversations with the Department's existing service contract providers, while servicing cost estimates were derived from costs currently incurred with the Department's Federal Direct Loan servicing contract.
Borrower Behavior. Given the base FFELP serves as the foundation of the new programs, and the characteristics of the base program are unchanged, there is no reason to believe that the Purchase Program and Participation Program outlined in this notice will affect borrower behavior. Thus, this cost analysis uses the same borrower behavior assumptions as were used in preparing the 2009 President's Budget to gauge the effect on program costs of borrowerbased activities such as loan repayment, use of statutory benefits such as deferments and loan discharges, and default rates and timing. These assumptions are based on a wide range of data sources, including the National Student Loan Data System, the Department's operational and financial systems, and a group of surveys conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics such as the 2004 National Postsecondary Student Aid Survey, the 1994 National Education Longitudinal Study, and the 1996 Beginning Postsecondary Student Survey.
Lender Behavior. A key factor in assessing whether the Purchase Program and Participation Program would operate in a costneutral manner was lender behavior: Specifically, how many lenders would participate in each program and how many loans would they eventually choose to sell to the Department. The Secretaries and Director considered alternative scenarios of market conditions and lender behavior to determine whether each program could be considered cost neutral.
In one scenario, the Secretaries and Director assumed that market
conditions would not improve and that FFELP lenders would put or sell
participation interests to the Department in 100 percent of all FFELP
loans made for the 200809 academic year. At the end of the
participation period, FFELP lenders would also put 50 percent of those
loans to the Department. The Secretaries and Director assumed that the
loan volume would be $65 billion and that the total portfolio would be
similar to the expected 20082009 school year of student loans under
the FFELP before enactment of the loan purchase authority in Public Law 110227.\3\ Further, the loans purchased at the end of the
participation period would be representative of the total loan volume.
Under this scenario, we determined that costs for both the Purchase
Program and the Participation Program were less expensive to the
Government than for the baseline subsidy costs for FFELP loans costs
for the FFELP baseline in this period. (Please see Table 2, located in
Appendix A, for a summary of the analysis for this scenario, which also includes the risk factors discussed in this notice.)
\3\ This loan volume assumption is the full FFELP non
consolidation estimate for the 20082009 academic year (as presented
in the 2009 President's Budget) and is adjusted to include increases
to unsubsidized Stafford Loan limits provided for in Pub. L. 110 227.
The Secretaries and Director also considered other scenarios. In
those scenarios, the Secretaries and Director sorted the expected FFELP
volume under the Purchase Program and Participation Program into three [[Page 37425]]
categories: Loans made by lenders and sold to the Department; loans
made by lenders on which the lenders first sold participation interests
to the Department and then, on September 30, 2009, sold the loans
themselves to the Department; and loans made by lenders on which
participation interests were sold to the Department but then redeemed
by the lender, for a cash payment, eliminating the Department's
participation interest. In general, the Secretaries and Director
derived volume allocations under particular scenarios by making
assumptions about nearterm market conditions, likely lender behavior
based on type of lending institution and operational capability, and
projecting lender demand for any particular option under those conditions.
One of these scenarios, considered to be one of the most costly to the Government, would be that market conditions improve significantly over the next year, and that lenders sell a greater proportion of higher cost loans to the Government (in a process often termed ``cherrypicking''). A Congressional Budget Office analysis, and other analyses, of the FFELP portfolio have found that certain loans are more profitable for FFELP lenders than others. In particular, borrowers with small balances provide relatively little margin income relative to the fixed costs lenders face to service those loans. Some borrowers, including those that attended schools with higher than average default rates, are more likely to become delinquent and, consequently, present higher expected default costs, and greater losses of margin income due to default.
The Terms and Conditions seek to reduce the impact of these risk factors. For example, program guidelines requiring lenders to sell all 200809 Stafford loans held for a specific borrower, combined with the administrative complexity and expense of identifying and deconverting only less profitable loans, make it less likely that lenders will choose to sell only poorlyperforming loans to the Department.
Nevertheless, if financial markets improve to the point where lenders can finance most loans privately, they might still sell those least profitable loans to the Department. In this situation, borrowers with very low balances will present relatively high servicing costs to the Department per dollar of outstanding balance.
Under the scenario described in the preceding paragraph, the
analysis estimates 4 percent of FFELP volume ($65 billion in the 2008
2009 academic year) will be loans made by lenders and sold to the
Department; 32 percent of volume ($21 billion) would be loans for which
participation interests, and then the loans themselves, would be sold
to the Department; and 32 percent ($21 billion) would be loans for
which participation interests were sold, but then redeemed.\4\ Cost
estimates assuming these volume allocations and risk adjustments for
this scenario still compared favorably with the costs for the base
FFELP. (Please see Table 3, located in Appendix A, for a summary of the
analysis for this scenario and the risk factors discussed in the following sections.)
\4\ The loan volume assumption in this scenario was developed
through conversations with a variety of lending institutions.
Depository lending institutions indicated that they would use their
own capital to originate new student loans rather than take
advantage of the participation agreement structure. Nondepository
institutions indicated they would use participation agreements. For
the top 100 lenders in FY 2007, which together accounted for over 80
percent of FFELP nonconsolidation volume, 33 percent of volume was
originated by depository institutions and 67 percent by non
depository institutions. (Figures for nondepository institutions
include loans made by depository institutions acting as eligible lender trustees.)
Lenders currently have $50 billion in warehouses and substantial additional loans securitized in rollover accounts that will require longterm refinancing. These inventory stocks may provide lenders with an incentive to put loans. Representatives of depository institutions indicated they may increase volume to ensure students have access to loans, but may not want to maintain this additional volume on their books.
In consideration of these factors, estimates assumed all 2008 2009 FFELP nonconsolidation loan volume originated by depository institutions over the level originated for 20072008 and 50 percent of 20082009 loans originated by nondepository institutions and included in the Loan Participation Purchase Program will be put. Estimates further assumed that all loans of $1,000 or less would be put first, with the balance up to the total amount put made up of loans of over $1,000.
It should also be noted that, in addition to the examples discussed herein that represent certain abnormal market and lender behavior conditions, all other alternatives under which the Purchase Program and Participation Program were analyzed were less expensive than base FFELP costs.
Risk Factors. Analyzing whether the Purchase Program and Participation Program would operate in a costneutral manner requires that projected costs account for the presence of various risks and cost factors that must be assumed since the programs will not operate entirely like the base FFELP, nor without operational risk. In addition to cherrypicking, the Secretaries' and Director's estimates included adjustments for four other factors: that lenders involved in loan participation agreements file for bankruptcy protection (``bankruptcy remoteness''); that lenders redeem their participation agreements early, reducing Federal earnings from the participation interests acquired (``interest adjustments''); that unforeseen problems undermine the Department's ability to effectively oversee and administer the Purchase Program and Participation Program (``operational risk''); and that some of the loans purchased by the Department would be those where the Department would otherwise reject a claim under the FFELP program (``claim rejects'').
The Terms and Conditions for each program seek to reduce the impact of these risk factors. None of these factors is likely to lead to significant additional Federal costs. For example, the requirement that lenders sell participation interests that total at least $50 million will limit involvement to large financial institutions that, in general, are financially stable and not likely to proceed to bankruptcy. Additionally, upon filing for bankruptcy, the yield owed by the lender to the Department increases from principal of that loan and the commercial paper rate plus 50 basis points, to principal of that loan and the commercial paper rate plus 300 basis points.
However, to ensure estimates reflect a conservative assessment of possible Federal costs, the Secretaries and Director added cost adjustments to incorporate each risk factor in all of the scenarios noted in the preceding paragraphs. The adjustments were based on an assessment of privatesector behavior and program data as follows:
Cost estimates reflecting these factors, for each of the market condition and lender behavior scenarios discussed elsewhere in this notice, were calculated and included, as illustrated in Tables 2 and 3. As those analyses show, even with these risk adjustments, the estimated costs of the loans included in the Purchase Program and Participation Program remained lower than those for standard FFELP loans.
Conclusion. After taking into account alternative market and lender behavior scenarios and appropriate risk factors, the Secretaries and Director determine that the Purchase Program and Participation Program are in the best interest of the United States and will result in no net cost to the Federal Government (including the cost of servicing the loans purchased).
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(Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance Number 84.032 Federal Family Education Loan Program)
Program Authority: 20 U.S.C. 1087i1.
Dated: June 25, 2008.
Margaret Spellings,
Secretary of Education.
Dated: June 25, 2008.
Henry M. Paulson, Jr.,
Secretary of the Treasury.
Dated: June 25, 2008.
Jim Nussle,
Director, Office of Management and Budget.
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[FR Doc. E814820 Filed 63008; 8:45 am]
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FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT Kristie Hansen, U.S. Department of Education, Office of Federal Student Aid, Union Center Plaza, 830 First Street, NE., Room 113F1, Washington, DC 20202. Telephone: (202) 377 3309 or by email: Kristie.Hansen@ed.gov.
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14 CFR Part 39 40 CFR Part 52 14 CFR Part 71 33 CFR Part 165 50 CFR Part 679 26 CFR Part 1 40 CFR Part 180 47 CFR Part 73 50 CFR Part 17 33 CFR Part 117 44 CFR Part 67 50 CFR Part 648 14 CFR Part 97 33 CFR Part 100 40 CFR Part 63 50 CFR Part 622 26 CFR Part 301 39 CFR Part 111 40 CFR Part 300 50 CFR Part 660 44 CFR Part 65 40 CFR Parts 52 and 81 40 CFR Part 271 47 CFR Part 64 50 CFR Part 665 47 CFR Part 76 50 CFR Part 229 14 CFR Part 23 14 CFR Part 25 21 CFR Part 522