Student-Loan Processor Navient to Cancel $1.7 Billion of Debts

“The company’s determination to resoluteness these matters, which were based connected unfounded claims, allows america to debar the further burden, expense, clip and distraction to prevail successful court,” said Mark Heleen, Navient’s main ineligible officer.

All of the loans forgiven successful the statement were successful default, and astir originated betwixt 2002 and 2010 at Sallie Mae, anterior to Navient’s spinoff from the student-lending giant.

Navient has faced galore lawsuits successful caller years that alleged the institution engaged successful unfair and deceptive behaviour against borrowers. Last March, a Seattle-area justice ruled that the institution had breached a user extortion instrumentality successful a lawsuit brought by Washington’s lawyer general.

“Navient repeatedly and deliberately enactment profits up of its borrowers—it engaged successful deceptive and abusive practices, targeted students who it knew would conflict to wage loans back, and placed an unfair load connected radical trying to amended their lives done education,” Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro said.

In summation to indebtedness cancellation and immoderate restitution for borrowers with backstage loans, Navient volition wage $95 cardinal to astir 350,000 national indebtedness borrowers—or astir $260 each—who were placed into definite types of forbearance programs that caused them to accumulate much indebtedness alternatively than entering income-based repayment plans, the states said.

States volition administer restitution to borrowers wrong their jurisdictions. Massachusetts, for example, volition person much than $6 million, including $2.2 cardinal successful restitution for much than 8,300 national indebtedness borrowers, authorities Attorney General Maura Healey said.

As portion of the agreement, Navient continued to contradict the claims oregon that the institution has harmed immoderate borrowers.

Private loans without national backing marque up little than 10% of the full $1.7 trillion student-loan industry. About 43 cardinal radical beryllium $1.6 trillion successful national pupil debt, Education Department information show. About 5.2 cardinal of those national borrowers are successful default. Those borrowers, unless they besides held backstage pupil loans, are not affected by Thursday’s settlement.

Navient is successful the midst of an exit from national student-loan processing. It has been 1 of the superior national contractors, serving astir six cardinal borrowers. Its accounts are being transferred to a caller contractor, Maximus, whose relation was approved by the Education Department.

The Biden medication is successful the midst of restructuring its student-loan processing system. In November it announced it was ending its narration with backstage postulation agencies that had been tasked with recovering payments from national student-loan borrowers successful default to amended collections and supply borrowers with much support.

Last February, borrowers petitioned a bankruptcy court successful New York to unit Navient’s loan-processing portion into bankruptcy, alleging the institution had improperly collected debts they didn’t owe. The institution called the claims frivolous, and a justice dismissed the case.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has been suing Navient since 2017 implicit allegations that it steered borrowers into postponing payments alternatively of entering lower-cost, income-driven repayment plans. The CFPB has said the signifier outgo borrowers $4 cardinal successful involvement expense. Navient has disputed the government’s claims.

Write to Gabriel T. Rubin astatine gabriel.rubin@wsj.com