The Navient Corporation blasted the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) in an Aug. 18 legal filing, claiming the federal agency’s lawsuit against the company “suffers from a basic failure of proof.”
In its Summary Judgment reply brief, Navient, the student loan servicer accused of creating obstacles to borrowers during repayment and also processing payments incorrectly, indicated that the CFPB failed to provide evidence on the deficiencies raised by Navient’s motion. Navient also said in its brief that the CFPB, despite being provided with massive information by Navient that included 11 terabytes of data for more than 6 million of its borrowers, could not identify any borrowers who were “supposedly harmed.”
“If there were any truth to its claims of widespread misconduct, the CFPB’s years of investigation and expansive discovery should have turned up a parade of borrowers to testify,” Navient’s brief stated. “Instead, the CFPB bristles at the suggestion that it is required to prove its case through the borrower testimony it once promised. The CFPB laments that 'it is impossible to identify the particular borrowers' who were supposedly harmed . . . ignoring the defendants’ massive productions of information (including 11 terabytes of data for more than 6 million borrowers).”
Navient claims that evidence should have been provided during summary judgment, and since the CFPB has provided no admissible evidence, summary judgment should therefore be granted.
In its latest brief, Navient also claimed the CFPB failed to prove its steering claims. The brief states, “the CFPB goes to great lengths to explain what its 'steering' claims are not. It turns out that 'steering' does not involve coercion.”
Navient indicated that the CFPB has continually changed its steering claims, and that the Navient website includes an easy tool for its borrowers to calculate their payments.
“The current version of the CFPB’s ever-changing epithet — 'steering' — amounts to a prescriptive requirement for Navient to provide 'individually-tailored advice,' . . . each time a borrower requests forbearance, including 'calculat[ing] the borrower’s estimated payment under IDR and communicat[ing ]that amount' and describing three supposed 'benefits' of IDR (but none of its potential drawbacks). . . . Setting aside that Navient’s website includes an easily accessible tool for borrowers to calculate their potential IDR payments, Statement of Undisputed Material Facts in Support of Defendants’ Motion for Summary Judgment (SUF) . . . and that Navient representatives did calculate borrowers’ payments and describe potential benefits where appropriate.”
Navient has been fighting an original complaint filed by the CFPB in 2017 in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania. The CFPB alleged that Navient used unlawful acts and practices in its servicing and collection of federal and private student loans.
Navient, formerly part of Sallie Mae, created repayment obstacles and incorrectly processed payments, the CFPB alleges. They also allege the company “illegally cheated struggling borrowers out of their rights to lower repayments, which cause them to pay much more than they had to for their loans.”