MeasureOne Issues Second Private Student Loan Performance Report

SAN FRANCISCO, July 29, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- MeasureOne, a specialized data company focused exclusively on student loan data, today released its second private student loan market report that shows continuing positive trends in repayment, delinquencies and charge-offs.

"The private market continues to show across the board improvement on all key performance metrics compared with the overall student loan market," said Dan Feshbach, MeasureOne founder and chief executive officer. "In particular, sound underwriting practices in the private loan market, including a strong focus on the ability to repay, has helped produce high performing loans while continued growth shows that lenders continue to meet the higher education financing needs of students and families." 

The Private Student Loan Performance Report – July 2014 analyzed loan data from the nation's largest active private student lenders and holders of student loan debt, a group that accounts for a significant percentage of all private student loans outstanding. The group includes: Discover Bank; Navient; PNC Bank, N.A.; Citizens Bank N.A.; Sallie Mae Bank; and Wells Fargo Bank, N.A. The entire private student loan market is estimated to be $92.6 billion or 7.8 percent of the $1.18 trillion student loan market. The six participants represent approximately 69 percent of the entire private student loan market.

Among the report's highlights:

• Private student loan delinquencies for the six participants continued to decline, hitting their lowest levels since the economic crisis in 2008.
  • Early stage delinquencies (30 to 89 days past due) declined 17 percent from Q1 2013 to Q1 2014 from 3.59 percent to 2.97 percent.
  • Serious delinquencies (90+ days past due) from Q1 2013 to Q1 2014 declined 13 percent from 2.92 percent to 2.55 percent.
• Charge off rates for the six participants also declined to post credit-crisis lows with rates dropping from 3.5 percent in Q1 2013 to 3.16 percent in Q1 2014.
• At the end of Q1 2014, approximately 74 percent of outstanding private student loans for the six participants were in repayment status. 
• Outstanding balances for the six participants grew $1.9 billion or 3 percent from Q1 2013 to Q1 2014.

In addition to the continued use of high underwriting standards, the prevalence of cosigners and school certification by the six participants also contributed to the better performance of private student loans. The report showed that 92 percent of undergraduate private student loans included a cosigner in Q1 2014, and that rate has been above 90 percent for several years.  School certification has been universally adopted for private loans for both undergraduate and graduate students, which is an important protection against over-borrowing.

The full Private Student Loan Performance Report – July 2014 is available for download at www.measureone.com.

About MeasureOne
MeasureOne, San Francisco, collects, analyzes, and distributes student loan data to provide insight into the nation's $1.1 trillion student loan debt. The company developed the nation's largest private student loan data cooperative of contributed loan data from the seven largest private lenders, and the industry's only standardized database of more than 500 securitizations. The company was founded by Dan Feshbach, who created the mortgage industry's largest cooperative databases, the LoanPerformance databases, which are now part of Corelogic, Inc. For more information about MeasureOne, visit www.measureone.com.

SOURCE MeasureOne