January 24, 2010

American Student Assistance’s New URL

American Student Assistance's Website Revamp Reinforces Stand-alone Nonprofit’s Position as Trusted Source of Information, Actionable Tools for Student Borrowers

American Student Assistance® (ASA), the leading, stand-alone nonprofit delivering higher education debt management services to students, today announced a major website re-launch and a new domain name.

The move from www.amsa.com to the new domain of www.asa.org reinforces ASA’s standing as a trusted nonprofit that students and families can rely on for neutral, honest federal college loan solutions. The website refresh better aligns ASA’s Internet strategy with its public purpose mission: to help student loan borrowers successfully manage their education debt.  

“We believe this new look and feel, and explicit nonprofit identity, capture our commitment to the central issue impacting college students and their families, which is how to manage the debt that comes along with higher education today,” said Susan Nathan, ASA's vice president of consumer services.

Given the financial upheavals of the past year, and the gloomy outlook for 2010, comprehensive education debt management has emerged as the number one pressing need for students and their families. College costs are rising faster than inflation, and the cumulative student debt is growing by 5.9% per year. At the same time, employment and salaries are going down, severely hampering college loan borrowers’ ability to repay their debt.  

The updated website is now a one-stop site with the most relevant information for borrowers to remain in good standing with their student loans. A self-identification quiz guides visitors to the tools that will be most helpful to them, such as receiving personalized answers to their student loan questions with Ask American Student Assistance; seeing how different repayment schedules could lower their monthly payments with repayment calculators; finding out how postponing repayment could impact how much they owe with deferment and forbearance calculators; or using the budget calculator to take charge of their finances.  A “delinquency timeline” also allows visitors to estimate the financial consequences of missing payments.

“Student loan borrowers today are struggling,” said Nathan.  “Often the difference for a federal student loan borrower between successfully managing the debt and having repayment difficulty is access to information about all of the remedies available to them. Our website [www.asa.org] puts borrower information front and center, where it helps students most.”

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About American Student Assistance

American Student Assistance® (ASA) is a private, federally funded, nonprofit organization that helps students and parents manage higher education debt. Its unique WellnessSM programs give student loan borrowers the support they need to avoid repayment problems. Incorporated in 1956, ASA® was the nation’s first private student loan guarantee agency and a model for the federal student loan program. As a premier student loan service provider, ASA delivers quality delinquency prevention services to the U.S. Department of Education, students, parents, schools, and lenders. ASA provides service to 1.8 million student loan borrowers nationwide and currently manages a student loan portfolio worth $45 billion. Based in Boston, ASA employs more than 500 associates nationwide and has been recognized by the Boston Business Journal and The Boston Globe as one of the region’s best places to work. Visit www.asa.org or call 617.728.4631 for more information.