Sloan Servicing: Why Your Loans Moved There and Whether to Consolidate After July 1, 2026

Sloan Servicing is a legitimate Nelnet brand for federal FFEL loans held by commercial lenders. The transfer changed who bills you. The loan stayed the same. The real question is whether to consolidate into a Direct Consolidation Loan or stay at Sloan on Income-Based Repayment (IBR). Since July 1, 2026, a new consolidation lands on the Repayment Assistance Plan or a fixed plan only and generally ends IBR for every Direct Loan you hold.

Sloan Servicing is a brand Nelnet runs for loans made under the Federal Family Education Loan (FFEL) Program and held by commercial lenders. It didn’t buy your loan, and it isn’t a private lender. The same Nelnet that services Department of Education loans at nelnet.studentaid.gov moved its commercially held FFEL accounts under the Sloan name, and your Nelnet login works at sloanservicing.com.

Sloan may own your loan, or it may be collecting for another lender. StudentAid.gov shows the holder.

Sloan carries the “Official Servicer of Federal Student Aid” banner but isn’t on the Department of Education’s list of servicers. Folks read that gap as a red flag. The plainer explanation: that list covers loans the Department owns, and if Sloan bills you, the Department doesn’t own that loan.

“Sloan sounds like a private loan” is the wrong answer, and it’s in nearly every thread. A Sloan loan is a federal FFEL loan and can be consolidated into the Direct Loan program; a private loan can’t.

The servicer name on your StudentAid.gov dashboard settles it. If it starts with “ED,” the Department holds that loan; if it says Sloan, a commercial lender does. How to tell federal from private loans walks through the screen; 800-433-3243 answers by phone.

Nelnet split its commercially held FFEL portfolio, the accounts beginning with D or J, onto a separate brand. The transfer was a servicing change, and the loans didn’t leave the federal program.

What didn’t change: your balance, interest rate, loan type, repayment plan, IBR enrollment, and federal status. The promissory note is untouched, and months you’ve earned toward FFEL IBR forgiveness stay earned.

What did change: who you pay, the website, the payment address, and possibly the number of bills. If you also hold Direct Loans elsewhere, you now pay two servicers. Your credit report may show the old Nelnet tradeline as closed due to transfer next to a new Sloan one, which is normal.

The split wasn’t done to make the loans harder to forgive; it separates loans the Department owns from loans it doesn’t.

The real transfer-era problem is administrative. Folks have reported accounts that arrived at Sloan without the IDR plan or forbearance on file at Nelnet, and learned of it from a past-due notice. That’s a servicing error, corrected by written request; the addresses are in the contact section.

A commercially held FFEL loan at Sloan can use Income-Based Repayment, the fixed plans, and the discharge and teacher-forgiveness programs, and it can’t reach Public Service Loan Forgiveness or the Repayment Assistance Plan unless a Direct Consolidation Loan repays it first. IBR is the only income-driven plan for FFEL loans, as Sloan’s site says.

FFEL IBR: yes. Your payment is 15% of the amount by which your adjusted gross income exceeds 150% of the poverty guideline for your family size, divided by twelve. Forgiveness comes after 25 years of qualifying months, and the clock can’t start earlier than July 1, 2009. The payment can’t go above what the 10-year standard plan would have charged when you entered IBR. On a subsidized loan the government covers unpaid interest for the first three years on IBR, and loans at more than one holder take a separate IBR request to each.

Under the current rule there’s no partial-financial-hardship test to get in; the payment is set from your income. Sloan’s IBR page still describes the old test. Interest capitalizes when you leave the plan or fail to recertify.

Public Service Loan Forgiveness: no. PSLF reaches Direct Loans only; payments on the Sloan loan don’t earn PSLF credit.

Repayment Assistance Plan: no. RAP is a Direct Loan plan. Only a Direct Consolidation Loan that repaid the FFEL loan can use it.

Disability discharge, death discharge, Teacher Loan Forgiveness, closed-school and false-certification discharge: yes, without consolidating. Teacher Loan Forgiveness on FFEL Stafford loans runs up to $17,500.

Fixed plans: standard, graduated, and extended.

FFEL Parent PLUS loans, and consolidation loans that repaid one, are excluded from FFEL IBR. That case has its own section below.

So “if it moved to Sloan it’s not eligible for forgiveness” is right only about PSLF and RAP. The broader FFEL-versus-Direct comparison is on what a FFELP loan is.

A Direct Consolidation Loan made on or after July 1, 2026 buys PSLF eligibility, RAP, and a fixed rate; it costs IBR, PAYE, and ICR on the new loan, generally costs IBR on every other Direct Loan you hold, and starts the PSLF count on the Sloan portion at zero. That’s because the new loan is a post-2026 Direct Loan. Consolidation is still available; what you get for it changed. The application is on how to consolidate a FFELP loan.

It buys PSLF eligibility. The new loan is a Direct Loan, so payments on it under a qualifying plan count toward the 120 for PSLF.

It buys RAP. The Repayment Assistance Plan charges 1% to 10% of adjusted gross income by income band, with a $10 floor and $50 off per dependent, and forgives the balance after 30 years. RAP has no cap at the 10-year standard amount, so it can run higher than IBR for a higher income against a smaller balance.

It buys a fixed rate and a new servicer. The rate is the weighted average of the loans consolidated, rounded up to the nearest higher one-eighth of one percent. Most FFEL loans first disbursed before July 1, 2006 carry a variable rate, so fixing it can land higher or lower than today’s rate. The new loan won’t be serviced by Sloan.

It costs IBR, PAYE, and ICR on the new loan, for good. A post-2026 Direct Loan can use RAP or Tiered Standard and nothing else; the full plan menu is on income-driven repayment.

It generally costs IBR on every other Direct Loan you hold. Under the current rule a borrower’s Direct Loans repay under the same plan, and the new consolidation can’t be on IBR, PAYE, or ICR, so a consolidation made now generally pulls your pre-2026 Direct Loans off those plans too. Consolidating the Sloan loan alone doesn’t avoid this; it still creates a post-2026 Direct Loan. How servicers apply that to an FFEL-only consolidation is new territory, which is why “generally” is the honest word.

It costs your PSLF count on the Sloan portion, which starts at zero. FFEL months were never PSLF-qualifying. Consolidate with Direct Loans that have counts and the new loan gets a weighted average of those counts. The one-time account adjustment that once overrode this closed June 30, 2024, and months inside the old loans can’t be bought back afterward.

It may cost your IBR forgiveness credit. Whether months built toward the 25-year FFEL clock carry into a Direct Consolidation Loan is disputed: the printed rule reads one way and the Department is reported to apply it another. Assume prior IBR credit may be lost.

It generally costs any lender rate reduction. An on-time-payment or auto-debit discount is a term of the FFEL loan, and it generally doesn’t carry into the consolidation that pays it off.

Timing counts from disbursement. An application filed in June 2026 that disbursed in July is a post-2026 loan. An active wage-garnishment order or unvacated judgment blocks consolidation until it’s lifted; see the default section below.

An FFEL Consolidation Loan can be reconsolidated by itself for PSLF or to get out of default. Otherwise it needs another eligible loan to consolidate with.

Most Sloan borrowers aren’t weighing a consolidation so much as asking what their options are, and the answer starts with what already happened. The one-time account adjustment that would have credited past FFEL years toward forgiveness closed to new consolidations on June 30, 2024, so that chance is gone. A consolidation made now narrows the menu to RAP or Tiered Standard, puts any IBR forgiveness credit you’ve built into the disputed column, and generally pulls any Direct Loan you hold on IBR, PAYE, or ICR off those plans. Consolidating used to be how a Sloan borrower reached those plans. Now it’s how they lose them.

You’re pursuing PSLF with years of public service ahead. Consolidation is the only way the Sloan loan becomes PSLF-eligible, and the count on the Sloan portion starts at zero. What decides it is how many qualifying years you have ahead, set against how far the FFEL IBR clock has already run.

You’ve been on IBR for years and are approaching the 25-year line. Staying keeps the FFEL IBR clock and the cap at the 10-year standard amount. Consolidating swaps a 25-year clock for a 30-year one, moves you to an uncapped payment, and puts your accumulated credit into the disputed column. What decides it is the number of months already credited toward the 25 years.

You hold a Sloan FFEL loan on IBR plus Direct Loans coming off SAVE. This is the poison-pill case. SAVE ended by court order on March 10, 2026, and folks coming off it are switching to IBR on the Direct side. A consolidation now generally ends IBR for those Direct Loans, and RAP’s formula has no adjustment for an FFEL loan you’re paying elsewhere; IBR’s does.

You don’t have to consolidate anything to keep both sides on IBR: the FFEL loan stays on FFEL IBR at Sloan and the Direct Loans go on Direct IBR at their servicer, through two separate requests. What decides it is whether any Direct Loan is on IBR, PAYE, or ICR today.

You’re married and your FFEL IBR payment jumped. On FFEL IBR a joint return brings your spouse’s income in; filing separately measures you on your own income. RAP counts joint income too. Its schedule has no poverty-guideline offset that grows with family size, only $50 off per dependent, so a joint return pushes the household up the schedule; if you both have loans, the one household payment is split by balance share, so the incomes aren’t counted twice.

Filing separately opts out there as well, and so does certifying on a joint return that you’re separated or can’t reasonably access your spouse’s income. What decides it is the two calculated payments, IBR and RAP, side by side at your actual filing status.

You applied to consolidate in June 2026 and it disbursed in July. You’re already on the post-2026 track: RAP or Tiered Standard on that loan, with the same-plan rule reaching your other Direct Loans. What decides your next move is which of those two plans fits your income and balance.

Parent PLUS, joint spousal, and defaulted loans each have their own section below.

An FFEL PLUS loan made to a parent can’t use FFEL IBR. At Sloan it sits on the standard, graduated, or extended plan.

A Direct Consolidation Loan that repays it, made on or after July 1, 2026, is an excepted consolidation loan: no RAP, no IBR, no PAYE, no ICR. That leaves Tiered Standard only, with no income-driven forgiveness path; the double-consolidation approach is outdated for the same reason. PSLF on such a loan runs only through a qualifying plan, and the Department has said Tiered Standard isn’t one, so a parent consolidation made now generally has no PSLF path either.

A parent who consolidated on or before June 30, 2026 is on a different track. That loan starts on ICR, and the regulation requires one ICR month billed and satisfied before it can move to IBR. A $0 month still counts, so long as it was billed and you satisfied it. The regulation itself says only that at least one payment was made and doesn’t address the $0 case, so this rests on how the Department administers the rule rather than on the text.

IBR has to be elected before ICR closes on June 30, 2028, and any new Direct Loan on or after July 1, 2026, including a new consolidation, generally ends that path. The full play is on Parent PLUS loan consolidation.

A parent who didn’t consolidate in time keeps the FFEL fixed plans, disability discharge, and death discharge, covered on Parent PLUS loan forgiveness.

The Joint Consolidation Loan Separation Act lets co-borrowers on an FFEL joint consolidation loan split it into two individual Direct Consolidation Loans. Applications opened September 30, 2024 on a paper Combined Application and Promissory Note. A joint application splits the whole balance; a separate application, for domestic violence, economic abuse, or no reasonable access to the co-borrower’s information, separates only your share and leaves the rest with the FFEL holder. FFEL holders were asked to hold the joint loan in forbearance while a separation is pending. Applications submitted after June 30, 2025 get no qualifying IDR or PSLF payments counted on the underlying commercial FFEL joint loan.

The separated loans are new Direct Consolidation Loans made now. As we read the current rule, they’re treated like any consolidation made after July 1, 2026: RAP or a fixed plan, no IBR. Advice to wait for new regulations before separating is out of date. The application mechanics are on spousal consolidation and divorce; its plan statements predate the cutoff.

One recurring mess: a separation that produced two Nelnet loans while Sloan kept billing the original balance. That’s a written-request problem.

A defaulted FFEL loan can’t be placed on IBR. The way out is rehabilitation or consolidation, and consolidation is blocked while an active wage-garnishment order or unvacated judgment stands; it has to be lifted first.

The Department of Education’s pause on wage garnishment and Treasury offset, in place since January 16, 2026 and still in place as of this writing, is the Department’s pause. A guaranty agency collecting on a commercially held FFEL loan isn’t covered by it.

Collection costs can be added on FFEL default. And on commercially held FFEL loans, interest that accrues during a forbearance capitalizes when the forbearance ends, the one exception to the general no-capitalization rule.

Phone: 833-597-5626 (833-59-SLOAN). International: 531-310-5286. TTY 711. Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. Eastern.

Written requests and qualified written requests: Sloan Servicing, P.O. Box 87865, Lincoln, NE 68501 (California residents: P.O. Box 87258, Lincoln, NE 68501), or WrittenRequest@sloanservicing.com.

Payments: accounts beginning “D” go to P.O. Box 2970, Omaha, NE 68103-2970; accounts beginning “J” go to P.O. Box 2877, Omaha, NE 68103-2877.

Repayment-plan, deferment, and forbearance documents: Attn: Enrollment Processing, P.O. Box 87290, Lincoln, NE 68501. Discharge, forgiveness, and bankruptcy claims: Attn: Claims, P.O. Box 87131, Lincoln, NE 68501. The online account has a secure upload.

A problem on the account gets corrected through a written request, and every later step in the complaint ladder rests on that dated record. The recurring problems: an IDR plan or forbearance that didn’t carry over from Nelnet, a borrower pulled out of forbearance with a past-due balance, a changed payment allocation, and a “paid in full” letter that means one loan inside a consolidation group was paid off. A dispute letter goes to the written-request address; when the servicer won’t help, the escalation path runs to the student loan ombudsman.

Tate Esq, LLC reads the whole portfolio, the Sloan loan’s IBR clock, every Direct Loan and the plan it sits on, the public-service years you have ahead, and tells you whether a consolidation now would cost more than it buys. If the answer is to leave things where they are, we’ll say so. Tell us about your situation.