Student loan SAVE delay shifts investor focus to $485 billion forbearance pool
Trump’s team is taking longer to push borrowers out of the SAVE student-loan repayment plan, shifting a big part of federal loans back onto staggered repayment. That delays the immediate payment spike for borrowers, but leaves servicers, private lenders and credit investors facing more months of limbo. Scale is the driver here. In March, the Education Department said 7.5 million borrowers were in SAVE. The latest Federal Student Aid update, posted June 23, reported 8.4 million had at least one loan in forbearance as of March 31—covering about $485 billion in federal student loans. These aren’t exact matches, but the SAVE number comes close to nine-tenths of the forbearance total.