Lord Browne of Belmont – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Browne of Belmont on 2015-02-12.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they have taken any steps to reduce the time taken to process applications for student loans.

Baroness Neville-Rolfe

The Student Loans Company is currently undergoing a business-wide Transformation programme intended to make it a digital centre of excellence, in line with the Government Digital Strategy. This includes an overhaul of its online assessment and application portals, in order to make them more efficient, customer-focussed and digital in design. All of these changes will enable significant improvements in the processing time of student loan applications. Recent improvements, for example, have increased immediate income-verification rates for sponsors from 75% last year to 81% in 2014-15.

Moreover, the Government plans to modify the Student Support Regulations to allow the use of electronic signatures for student loan applications. This means that students will no longer need to print, sign and return the completed loan contract by post, or wait for confirmation of its receipt. In the future, many applicants will be able to complete the entire application process and have an approved loan in a single sitting.