August Market Pulse Q&A: Your Top Questions on Student Loans & Fraud Answered

Highlights:

• The August Market Pulse Q&A addresses audience questions on student loan reclassification (likely due to the end of the on-ramp program and new deferral options like SAVE) and clarifies that credit washing falls under first-party synthetic ID fraud.

Both before and during each Market Pulse webinar, our audience submits their burning questions to our expert panelists, some of which we run out of time to cover in the live webinar and which we then answer in this blog. For our August Market Pulse webinar, our panel included Dr. Amy Crews Cutts, President and Chief Economist at AC Cutts & Associates, Emmaline Aliff, Advisory Leader at Equifax, along with Maria Urtubey and Jesse Hardin, Senior Advisors at Equifax. Below are their answers on questions around student loans and fraud.

Q: When reviewing federal student loan balances, we observe a reclassification from non-deferred to deferred occurring around Q4 2024. What factors drove this shift?

Maria Urtubey, Equifax: This is likely due to a combination of factors; with the end of on-ramp program in September 2024 (and reporting resuming in October), some account holders opted for new programs and deferral alternatives. SAVE (income-based repayment plan) was in litigation as well and a significant number of past due accounts were reported as deferred.

Q: Which category of fraud is credit washing in?

Jesse Hardin, Equifax: Credit washing is part of first party fraud, specifically we've captured it in the synthetic ID fraud bucket.

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Reach out to the Equifax Risk Advisory team at [email protected] for full access to the standard charts and graphs referenced in this report.

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