How generative AI can help student loan servicers through the October shock

With the coming end of the student loan forbearance, there’s a lot of chatter about “payment shock” for borrowers who need to find room in their budgets for a long-paused bill.

But what about the shock for loan servicers?

‍What’s coming in October

Agents in consumer finance know that a big part of the job can be financial coaching, and that is going to be a major part of helping borrowers get through the student loan payment shock.

This isn’t going to be as easy as setting up a payment in an account portal.

Borrowers are going to need help with:

Incorporating a payment they haven’t included in over three years
Squeezing out extra cash during a period of high inflation
Managing priorities with record-high interest rates on other loans
Adjusting payments due to additional obligations

Because the FSA’s plan to deliver performance incentives and additional account assignments depends on things like keeping vulnerable borrowers current, we’ll need reps to be at the top of their game fast - providing good information, managing complaints, being empathetic, and making sure borrowers are in a good place to make their payments.

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How generative AI can soften the October shock

We’ve all been talking about generative AI this year - asking ChatGPT to write limericks or telling DALL-E to create images that give our dogs mermaid tails.

But generative AI isn’t just for fun. With the right solutions, you can help make your team feel like this October earthquake is more like a speed bump.

‍Here’s what to look for in a solution:

‍Trained on consumer finance

You need generative AI that understands finance.

This may seem like a gimme, but it’s important. Having a solution that’s trained on the conversations you have every day delivers human-level accuracy.

Supports agents from day 1 - and doesn’t stop there

A real-time agent assistance solution will save your proverbial bacon in four big ways:

Slashes ramp time - Reduce onboarding time for brand-new agents by 50% and experienced agents by 75%.
Identifies and captures complaints - Custom-built AI can help your agents spot - and solve - problems before they escalate.
Coaches agents on compliance - Real-time agent assistance coaches agents through calls, reminding them of compliance tasks and freeing them up to focus on what matters - borrowers.
Supports the agent/borrower relationship - AI can understand the context of conversations, as well as tone and sentiment, to make sure agents are acting with empathy and connecting with consumers.

‍Relieves agent stress by handling monotonous tasks

Consumer finance AI company Prodigal’s CEO Shantanu Gangal talks about the relationship between humans and AI this way:

“Anything you are doing several times a day or that you spend several hours in a month doing is something you should figure out how you can automate.”

In student loan servicing, one easy win that delivers a pile of benefits is automating conversation notes.

Normally, after every call, agents have to spend time manually writing notes to record the interaction.

But generative AI can solve for all that by relieving agents of multitasking, generating notes in seconds after a call ends, and creating automated, standardized notes that are easy to scan and search.