HomeDashboardStudent-loan complaints

Analysis 08 of 10Data

Which student-loan servicers answer complaints on time?

Which student-loan servicers handle borrower complaints well, and which ones are quietly failing on response time?

The short answer Most of the 62,013 student-loan complaints since January 2023 are about servicing, not lending: 'dealing with your lender or servicer' is 63.8% of them, and federal loan servicing is 80.4%. Response time separates the servicers. MOHELA, the largest at 22,757 complaints, answers on time only 64.4% of the time and EdFinancial 65.9%, while Nelnet, Navient and Maximus answer on time about 99% or more.

  • Public data, not my business
  • September 2026 partial
Source
CFPB Consumer Complaint Database (student-loan complaints, January 2023 onward), Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
Period
Jan 2023 to Sep 2026
Licence
CC0, as stated in the CFPB complaint API metadata (data.gov lists no license)
Charts
4, each with its data table and CSV

Key figures

  • 62,013Total complaintsover 45 months, Jan 2023 to Sep 2026
  • 63.8%Top issue: lender/servicer problemsof 62,013 complaints
  • 79.0%Overall timely-response rateof 62,013 complaints
  • 80.4%Federal loan servicing shareof complaints, vs. private loans

The charts

Chart 1Lead chart · trend

Federal loan servicing drives most complaints, month after month.

How many student-loan complaints come in, and what kind of loan are they about?

Complaints received each month, federal servicing and private loans stacked. The busiest full month was March 2025 with 3,413. September 2026 is partial: the data was pulled on Oct 5, 2026.
Download CSV

CFPB Consumer Complaint Database · public data, not my business

Monthly volume: 45 rows. monthly_volume in finance.json. All = federal + private in every month (checked on this page).
MonthFederal student loan servicingPrivate student loanAll
2023-01434146580
2023-02396132528
2023-03372143515
2023-04269128397
2023-05279131410
2023-06280117397
2023-07400170570
2023-08584185769
2023-091,2451781,423
2023-101,9501802,130
2023-111,4701551,625
2023-121,1561331,289
2024-011,4471701,617
2024-021,0471751,222
2024-031,1142091,323
2024-048682911,159
2024-056546061,260
2024-06579408987
2024-07614346960
2024-08606276882
2024-091,0944551,549
2024-101,0274321,459
2024-11654262916
2024-121,0772461,323
2025-011,8773552,232
2025-021,5992691,868
2025-033,1282853,413
2025-041,8583012,159
2025-051,5993041,903
2025-061,1172921,409
2025-071,2612971,558
2025-089982631,261
2025-091,0762491,325
2025-101,0242891,313
2025-118693181,187
2025-121,3043601,664
2026-011,7243762,100
2026-021,2473061,553
2026-031,6943502,044
2026-041,6083891,997
2026-051,2953211,616
2026-061,4003251,725
2026-071,4833411,824
2026-081,1662931,459
2026-099161971,113

Chart 2Ranking

Dealing with the lender or servicer is 63.8% of complaints.

What do borrowers complain about?

'Dealing with your lender or servicer' accounts for 63.8% of all 62,013 complaints, far ahead of any other issue.
Download CSV

CFPB Consumer Complaint Database · public data, not my business

Top issues: 10 rows. top_issues in finance.json, sub-product All.
IssueShare of complaints (%)Complaints
Dealing with your lender or servicer63.839,564
Struggling to repay your loan18.311,342
Incorrect information on your report95,567
Improper use of your report3.11,910
Problem with a company's investigation into an existing problem2.41,488
Getting a loan21,223
Credit monitoring or identity theft protection services0.4264
Issue with income share agreement0.4219
Issue where my lender is my school0.3196
Problem with fraud alerts or security freezes0.2134

Chart 3Breakdown by company

MOHELA, the largest servicer, is the one with untimely responses (20.7%).

How do the largest servicers resolve complaints?

How each of the eight largest companies closed its complaints. Untimely response is one of the CFPB's company-response categories; the timely-response rates in the findings come from the separate timely flag, so the two do not match one to one.
Download CSV

CFPB Consumer Complaint Database · public data, not my business

How they close: 8 rows. company_response in finance.json; percent of each company's complaints.
CompanyComplaintsClosed with explanation (%)Closed with non-monetary relief (%)Closed with monetary relief (%)In progress (%)Untimely response (%)
MOHELA22,75769.64.31.24.220.7
Nelnet, Inc.11,49399.9000.10
Maximus Federal Services, Inc.6,92799.70.20.100
EdFinancial Services5,12599.4000.60
Navient Solutions, LLC.4,76099.20.60.100
SLM CORPORATION1,77883.7112.52.80
AES/PHEAA862917.21.30.60
Central Research Inc6951000000

Chart 4Breakdown by place

California files the most, as the largest state.

Where do the complaints come from?

Raw complaint counts by state (not adjusted for population; larger states naturally show more complaints).
Download CSV

CFPB Consumer Complaint Database · public data, not my business

By state: 15 rows. complaints_by_state in finance.json (top 15 states, raw counts).
StateComplaints
CA6,089
TX4,784
FL4,343
NY3,958
GA3,291
PA2,969
IL2,671
OH2,104
NC2,090
NJ1,998
VA1,940
MI1,927
MD1,790
MA1,755
CO1,233

01Findings

What the charts say.

  1. Federal loan servicing is 80.4% of all complaints and outnumbers private loans in every month shown.

    Chart 1

  2. 'Dealing with your lender or servicer' is 63.8% of all complaints, and 'struggling to repay your loan' is 18.3%.

    Chart 2

  3. MOHELA answers on time 64.4% of the time and EdFinancial 65.9%; Nelnet, Navient and Maximus about 99% or more. The overall timely rate is 79.0%.

    Chart 3

  4. California, Texas and Florida file the most. These are raw counts, not per borrower, so larger states naturally show more.

    Chart 4

02Method

How the figures were built.

Steps

  1. Excluded 'Servicer under contract with Federal Student Aid' from the servicer comparison: it is a generic CFPB label for complaints routed to the Department of Education, not one company, and every one of its complaints is coded untimely.
  2. Kept 11 columns: date, product, sub-product, issue, sub-issue, company, state, submission channel, company response, timely flag, and tags.
  3. Dropped the consumer complaint narrative text entirely, for privacy and file size; it is not in the published table.
  4. Parsed 'Date received' down to a plain YYYY-MM-DD string; all rows had a valid date.
  5. All rows are 'Student loan' product complaints already, split into Federal student loan servicing and Private student loan sub-products.
  6. Ranked companies by complaint volume before looking at response-quality rates, so a company with 50 complaints and 100% timely responses is not compared head-to-head with one that has 20,000.

62,013 complaints, all used. Every derived figure on this page (changes, indexes, averages, counts) is computed from the published rows, and the table under each chart says how.

Checks

  • Federal plus private equals the All count in every month (checked on this page).
  • Companies are ranked by volume before response quality is compared, so small and large servicers are not set head to head.
  • Each table on this page is the published chart data in finance.json, shown row for row.

The queries

The query runs on the table student_loan_complaints (62,013 complaints). Open it in Live SQL, which runs DuckDB in your browser on the same public tables; the query loads ready to run.

Top servicers by volume, with timely-response rate

Open in Live SQL 
SELECT company, COUNT(*) n,
       ROUND(100.0*SUM(CASE WHEN timely THEN 1 ELSE 0 END)/COUNT(*), 1) pct_timely
FROM student_loan_complaints
GROUP BY 1
ORDER BY n DESC
LIMIT 8

Monthly complaint volume

Open in Live SQL 
SELECT strftime(strptime(date_received, '%Y-%m-%d'), '%Y-%m') AS ym, COUNT(*) n FROM student_loan_complaints GROUP BY 1 ORDER BY 1

Top 10 issues by share of complaints

Open in Live SQL 
SELECT issue, COUNT(*) n, ROUND(100.0*COUNT(*)/(SELECT COUNT(*) FROM student_loan_complaints), 1) pct FROM student_loan_complaints GROUP BY 1 ORDER BY n DESC LIMIT 10

Federal vs private complaint share and timely-response rate

Open in Live SQL 
SELECT sub_product, COUNT(*) n, ROUND(100.0*SUM(CASE WHEN timely THEN 1 ELSE 0 END)/COUNT(*), 1) pct_timely FROM student_loan_complaints GROUP BY 1

Caveats

  • Complaints are not a random sample of borrowers; volume reflects company size and how aware borrowers are of the complaint process, not just service quality. The final month in the data (September 2026) is partial.

Releases and revisions

  • Pulled on October 5, 2026. The CFPB adds complaints daily and companies can update responses, so later pulls can differ.

03Sources

Sources and licence.

Licence: CC0, as stated in the CFPB complaint API metadata (data.gov lists no license). Public data, not my business.

Download the chart data

Each CSV is made in your browser from the rows in that chart's table.

All ten analyses on the Dashboard

04Contact

Want this kind of breakdown on your own data?

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zacharybhenley@gmail.com Book a 30-minute call