By Gavin Mackintosh-
The Student Loans Company (SLC) is recruiting for current, future and former students to join its Student Finance Customer Panel.
The panel, established in 2021, recently ended its current term and is seeking new members to support the work of the organisation.
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With 9.4 million customers, SLC seeks to enable opportunity by supporting students to access higher education (HE) and further education (FE) by making timely and accurate payments of Maintenance Loans to learners and Tuition Fee Loans to HE and FE providers.
The panel is also useful in determining appropriate rates of pay back loan from indebted students once they are earning an adequate income.
Every year, millions of British students in the UK receive loans to finance their university education.
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How much students repay depends on their income. You’ll repay a percentage of your income over the ‘threshold’ for your type of loan, depending on how often you get paid.
The thresholds are different for each plan type.
Plan type Yearly threshold Monthly threshold Weekly threshold
Plan 1 £22,015 £1,834 £423
Plan 2 £27,295 £2,274 £524
Plan 4 £27,660 £2,305 £532
Plan 5 £25,000 £2,083 £480
Postgraduate Loan £21,000 £1,750 £403
Students repay either 9% of their income over the threshold if they are on Plan 1, 2, 4 or 5, or 6% of their income over the threshold if they are on a Postgraduate Loan plan.
The examples show how much you’d repay depending on your income and plan type:
Sitting alongside user testing and research, the Customer Panel is integral to SLC’s work to deliver an outstanding customer experience.
Following the significant contribution of SLC’s initial customer panel, new panel members will be empowered to build on that success by sharing their thoughts, unique perspectives, and experiences to help SLC continuously understand how it interacts with customers at every step of the journey.
The members are representing students and graduates from all the over UK who use services including Student Finance England (SFE), Student Finance Wales (SFW), Student Finance Northern Ireland (SFNI), and the Student Awards Agency Scotland (SAAS).
Whether they are starting out in study or repaying their loans SLC wants to hear from them.
David Wallace, Deputy CEO & Chief Customer Officer at SLC, said “We want to deliver the best possible experience for our customers and to do that, we need to understand what we’re doing right and where we can improve.
That’s where our Customer Panel comes in. This is a hugely important group of people with their own personal views and experiences of the Student Loans Company. We want to hear about their perspectives and use that knowledge and information to shape how we look to continually improve our customers’ experience.”
Members will serve on the panel for two years, which meets quarterly to discuss ideas and improvements.
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