US – Fintechs are always at the verge of finding new methods to overcome the disrupting financial markets and levelling the playing field. Their major drawback is that they have yet not been successful when it comes to helping people manage debt.
The good news is that Fintechs are now in a position to deal with this aspect as well. Financial data aggregator Plaid has given Fintechs access to student loan data from 90% of the student lenders via its new product Liabilities. Being armed with this data Plaid bets that Fintechs will roll out apps which would help people to manage their debts in a better way.
Earlier Plaid had given access to Fintechs on the banking information of customers which turned out to be a great success. This time the San Francisco-based company Plaid is taking a step forward and getting into student loans.
Kate Adamson the head of mortgages at Plaid in his blog post at the time of announcing the new product wrote: – “Fintech developers will have the access they need to help the borrowers understand, engage with, and manage their student loan debt with the Liabilities endpoint. This new product will help in retrieving standardized student loan data across the largest U.S. servicers including Navient, Nelnet, FedLoan, Great Lakes, and many more.”
Plaid decided to step into the student loan debt market mainly because of its sheer size and the impact it has on the consumers. As per the records currently the nation owes $1.5 trillion in student debt with more than 44 million people on the hook for some amount of student loans. $30,000 is the average owed per individual. This crushing debt is a big barrier for people to fulfill their dreams of getting married, buying a home, purchasing a new car or saving for retirement.
According to Plaid nearly 99% of the applications get rejected by the government. It is only because the process is very complicated. The data will enable Fintechs like https://finance43.com/ in the following ways:
- Help borrowers simplify the refinancing process
- Streamline repayment of student loans
- Assist employers with repayment benefits
- Help in developing student loan benefit repayment technologies
- Help consumers better understand debt forgiveness programs
- Guide consumers through the application process
Let us wish good luck to Liabilities and hope the new solutions built by the developers will surely be of help to people in managing their debt.