What NOT to Do! Exit the School Loan Business
What to do This is a perfect opportunity for banks and credit unions to distance themselves from the big banks pulling out of student lending:
Anyway, there’s lots of opportunity especially with the growth of social networking and the exit of several large student lenders. Two startups showed new solutions at our Finovate Startup conference several weeks ago: GreenNote and SimpleTuition. And there are others entering the market such as Fynanz (previous post here) and Qifang, a Chinese startup TechCrunch wrote about in February (here).
It’s been awhile since we’ve had an installment of What NOT to Do! (note to self: think of a catchier title). There have been a number of candidates in recent weeks, but the winners are HSBC, M&T, and TCF, which have elected to get out of the federal student-loan business (FFEL) (see notes 1, 2).
Although overshadowed by the Bear Stearns debacle and other unpleasant economic news, these three banks managed to make the first page of Thursday’s Personal Journal section in The Wall Street Journal (here) as well as a number of regional news sites (here and here).
If there’s one thing most Americans believe in, it’s the importance of education.
