Student loans suddenly reporting as closed??

[ChemE_Bear]

I pulled my 3 bureau reports through Experian this morning and my two federal student loans are suddenly reporting as closed.  I graduated in December 2019 and was in grace until June 2020.  I declined the CARES Act forebearance after a couple of months of them being put in automatic forebearance so I could make automatic payments through my servicer Cornerstone/UHEAA.  The loans started reporting as open in July 2020 and my first official payment due date was September 1 after declining forebearance.  I paid 2x what my minimum payment was in June, July, and August and now they are suddenly reporting as closed?? What is going on? These are my only installment loans.  For some reason my scores didn't drop due to no installment accounts and I haven't received any alerts through myFICO for those loans going from open open -> closed.  They are listed as in Repayment on Cornerstone's website.  They were still listed as open according to reports I pulled from myFICO on 8/28, as of last night's update on CreditKarma, and on EX and EQ reports pulled from AnnualCreditReport last week. Weirdly, my scores didn't drop as I've seen with 0 installment accounts before and are still at EX/EQ/TU 754/755/751...

[Tonya-E]

When this happened to me I found out that my loans had been transferred to a new servicer. The new loans appeared within days. The history remained from the old and the new loans. It has no effect on scoring.

[ChemE_Bear]

Hm, OK thanks for the information - were you informed before or after they were reported as closed by your servicer? I haven't heard anything from UHEAA/Cornerstone.

[Tonya-E]

I received no notification of the change until after it happened. I'm not saying this is the case for you, just a possibility. My loans were federal and originally listed as US Departmnet of Ed Direct Loans. They then switched to EdFinancial.

[ChemE_Bear]

OK, I actually do have two alerts on myFICO that shows both loans going from Student Loan Fixed Rate to Student Loan - Payment Deferred Fixed Rate.  Is this due to the extension of the deferral period for student loans?  I have already declined this through Cornerstone but I guess it reset with the new extension?

[Tonya-E]

I think that is due to the extension of the 0% and forbearance, yes. You may have to check that out to make sure they didn't reset it.  Mine didn't reset when that changed but I know the servicers have all handled this differently. 

[calyx]

Yeah, it looks like the extension might have tripped things up.

I don't know if it would be easier for you, but you could maybe automate the payment as a push-pay from your bank account instead of automated through Cornerstone so you don't have to worry about it?  That's how I handled my extra payments (I'm also with Cornerstone).

[ChemE_Bear]

Cornerstone website still says my automatic payment for October is good to go and absolutely no indication that they are closed or transferred. Does MyFICO alert you when accounts are closed? I got an alert my balance decreased due to my September payment but no alerts for accounts closing. The 3B report from Experian has them open on TU but not on EQ or EX. I'll pull my reports from AnnualCreditReport next week for EQ and EX to see if the accounts are reporting correctly there and if this is an Experian issue.

[ChemE_Bear]

Yep, I confirmed today that the loans are reporting as open on EX and EQ according to reports I pulled today from AnnualCreditReport.com... no idea why they are showing as closed on Experian's website.

[juggernaut9]

I am just now experiencing this issue. I have 4 student loans with FedLoan Servicing. I left my loans in the forbearance, but have continued to make payments to bring my installment utilization rate down. Two of the loans are now reported as closed on EQ and TU. EX still shows all 4 as open. I received myFICO notifications for the EQ update, but it did not include the payment that I made last month. FedLoan reports to the credit bureaus the last day of the month and my payments tend to be reflected between the 10th and 15th, so I'm hoping to see it reported next week. 

I really hope that two of my loans are being sent to a new service company and they are not just reporting as closed. Has anyone who experienced this issue called the current servicer and received more confirmation of their loans being transferred to a new company?