Written By Kevin Payne
If you have private student loans, you may have heard of Heartland ECSI. Often lenders use payment collection services through a third party. Heartland ECSI is one of the oldest third-party student loan servicers in the country.
While it’s been around for a long time, you may not know what it does in terms of student loan debt and how it operates. In this Heartland ECSI review, we’ll take a closer look at this servicer and what you can expect when paying back your student loans.
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Who is Heartland ECSI?
Heartland Educational Computer Systems, Inc., or Heartland ECSI, is a student loan servicer. That means that it doesn’t offer student loans. Instead, it merely collects payments for loans. So when you make a payment, they process it. Heartland ECSI partners with more than 1,900 colleges and universities across the country. It also works with private loan providers to offer collection management services.
Another service that Heartland ECSI offers is payment plans for borrowers with past due accounts. Keep in mind there are management fees associated with using these payment plans and only some institutions participate in this program. Be sure to check with your school to see if this is an option.
What types of student loans does Heartland ECSI service?
Although it doesn’t actually offer student loan funds, Heartland ECSI is somewhat unique in the types of student loans it services. It handles an assortment of loans, including:
- Perkins
- Primary care loans
- Health and nursing loans
- Private student loans
- Refinanced student loans
- Institutional loans
The majority of loans serviced by Heartland ECSI are health and nursing loans through the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), in the form of Loans for Disadvantaged Students (LDS) and Health Professions Student Loans (HPSL). What most people don’t realize is these loans are actually non-direct federal loans.
Institutional loans are private loans given out by colleges and universities directly but are serviced by Heartland ECSI.
Who has loans through Heartland ECSI?
At Student Loan Planner®, we see many HPSL loans held by dentists, nurses, and other health care professionals. We’ve also seen some veterinarians with loans serviced by Heartland ECSI.
With all of these loans, student loan borrowers have no choice as to the loan service provider. Lenders assign Heartland ECSI as the loan servicer and inform borrowers.
Heartland ECSI reviews and complaints
In our Student Loan Planner loan servicer survey in 2024, 27 respondents said they had a negative experience with Heartland ECSI, while 13 said they had a positive experience.
Heartland ECSI has an A+ rating with the Better Business Bureau (BBB), but they also have their fair share of customer complaints. As of March 2024, it’s had 134 complaints in the last three years. This includes 42 complaints in the past 12 months. Also, 16 BBB reviews gave the servicer a one-star rating. Most of the complaints are related to issues with billing, but there are also numerous complaints of poor customer service.
Some borrowers complain about student loan payments being marked late because they changed the due date, billing statements mailed multiple times, and how hard it is to get in touch with a customer service representative. Some also say the ECSI website has a lot of bugs.
Options for people with loans serviced by Heartland ECSI
Our experience shows borrowers should move on from Heartland ECSI as soon after graduation as possible. Depending on the type of student loan, there are two main repayment options for borrowers: consolidate your federal loans and pursue loan forgiveness or refinance your loans.
Consolidating your Heartland ECSI federal loans
If you have federal student loans from the Department of Education serviced by Heartland ECSI, one option is to consolidate your federal loans to a Direct Consolidation Loan. This option makes sense if you’re planning on loan forgiveness through one of the payment options under Income-Driven Repayment (IDR).
Most likely these are LDS or HPSL federal loans through the HRSA. These loans usually don’t show up on the National Student Loan Data System summary tables.
You can typically tell if you have these loans by looking at your interest rate. All of these types of loans are set at exactly 5%. Institutions choose these loans for students because they have a lower interest rate.
But schools fail to realize the interest rate isn’t the only factor to look at when choosing student loans. Mainly, LDS and HPSL loans are considered non-direct student loans. Therefore, they aren’t eligible for any type of loan forgiveness or federal loan repayment programs. You need to consolidate these non-direct loans to even become eligible for federal forgiveness programs.
As an example, we had a couple come to us recently looking for repayment advice. They were both dentists and had combined student loan debt of $1 million, with $900,000 of their debt being direct federal loans.
They were pursuing income-driven loan forgiveness through Pay As You Earn (PAYE). This couple also had a $50,000 Federal Perkins loan and a $50,000 health professions student loan, both serviced by Heartland ECSI. Without consolidating these ECSI loans, they’d end up paying around $1,000 a month over 10 years, just for these two loans. These are huge expenses as you can imagine!
However, if they consolidated, that $100,000 would basically be added to the forgiven balance. Their PAYE online payments wouldn’t go up because their plan is based on income. Now, they would end up paying about 40 percent of the forgiven amount because of the tax bomb that comes at the end of income-based loan forgiveness.
But that’s 20 years down the road. They have time to financially plan for it. With consolidation, their $100,000 Heartland ECSI loans became like $20,000 to $30,000 in today's dollars.
Refinancing your Heartland ECSI private loans
If your Heartland ECSI loan isn’t set at a 5% interest rate, you probably have a private loan on your hands. To get out of having Heartland ECSI as your loan servicer and to pay off your loans faster, it might be wise to refinance your loans with a new lender.
The advantage of refinancing is you get to choose the lender and servicer you deal with and take advantage of cashback bonuses available. Doing this could get you a lower interest rate and better terms, saving you thousands in interest.
You want to review refinancing lenders and see if they have perks like deferment and forbearance, provide personal contact information, and apply. Once you get approved, you can create an online account with a username and password and take advantage of a new servicer hopefully at a better rate.
Bottom line
If you have student loans serviced through Heartland ECSI, take time to determine what type of loans are being handled through the servicer. They don’t go out of their way to explain your type of loan, so you’ll have to do your homework to see if there are better repayment options.
We feel most people with Heartland ECSI loans have better options on the table no matter what type of loans are serviced. The more informed you are about your student loan debt, the better your chances of finding the repayment option that saves you the most money in the long run.
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| Lender Name | Lender | Offer | Learn more |
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$500 Bonus
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Fixed 5.24 - 9.99% APR*
Variable 6.24 - 9.99% APR*
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$1,000 Bonus
For 100k or more. $300 for 50k to $99,999
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Variable 5.28 - 10.24% APR
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$1,000 Bonus
For 100k or more. $200 for 50k to $99,999
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Fixed 5.19 - 9.74% APR
Variable 5.99 - 9.74% APR
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$1,050 Bonus
For 100k+, $300 for 50k to 99k.
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Fixed 5.44 - 9.75% APR
Variable 5.49 - 9.95% APR
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$1,275 Bonus
For 150k+, $300 to $575 for 50k to 149k.
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Fixed 5.48 - 8.69% APR
Variable 5.28 - 8.99% APR
|
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$1,250 Bonus
For 100k+, $350 for 50k to 100k. $100 for 5k to 50k
|
Fixed 5.48 - 10.98% APR
Variable 5.28 - 12.41% AR
|
Not sure what to do with your student loans?
Take our 11 question quiz to get a personalized recommendation for 2024 on whether you should pursue PSLF, Biden’s New IDR plan, or refinancing (including the one lender we think could give you the best rate).
I just signed on to ECSI’s website and cannot believe that for such a large servicer, it offers some of the poorest options and website functionality of any servicer I have used. First, if I want to make a single payment, I will have to pay an extra fee for the processing. The only way to avoid this is to set up an automatic payment option. With NO OTHER company, whether student loan servicer, or utility or phone company, do I have to pay a servicing fee for a single payment. This is nothing more than extortion. What if I want to make an additional payment? Sure, it’s ok, as long as I pay extra. The website most likely hasn’t been updated in years. I try to view a document, and all is ok. But don’t try to view another, since I will get an ‘invalid session’ message. And let’s not talk about their mobile app, which hasn’t been updated in FOUR years. Check out the user reviews. They are not pretty. Could it be time to do another article, this time with a bit more digging?
That doesn’t surprise me. Most servicing bids are put in with the idea that the low cost (not the high service) will win, so that kind of thing is what you see as a result. If you want to leave ECSI it’s pretty easy because all you need to do is refinance: https://www.studentloanplanner.com/refinance-student-loans/
If you need to go for forgiveness, you move the loans to a new lender that handles direct federal loans. Either option involves leaving ECSI so maybe that’s the problem in your situation I don’t know.
Thanks for the response. I wonder if pressure can be put on schools to negotiate better deals for their students. There are lots of companies out there who are willing and able to offer excellent service to their customers. The ripoffs need to be pushed aside.
Whyyyyyyy is so hard to make a freeeeaking payyyyyment????????????
Great question. That’s why we usually recommend transferring ECSI loans to another loan servicer through a Direct Consolidation application.
ECSI is the worst student loan servicer I’ve seen. They are unclear about your account status, their website never matches their paper statements, and they make it impossible to pay online. Calling? Forgettaboutit. I am researching how to transfer anything I owe away from them. Heck I’d even give them to Navient at this point.
since my loan was transferred from keiser university, heartland ecsi ****** me over. pardon my french but i am so sick of this company. I am not paying them a single dime until they fix my credit. Since i was transferred even though I was not notified. I had to pay the month I was in transfer for so I was responsible for that and then the current month. They wanted me to pay over 1000 dollars hint i was only paying 200 a month for all my loans now I am screwed. Please help!!
You need to consolidate the heartland loans w your federal loans to get 1 payment. studentaid.gov can do this
Just reading this alone gives me comfort in knowing that I am not alone in my frustrations with this company. Really, they have caused me so much unnecessary stress because of their own errors, negligence, incompetence, and extremely outdated and incomprehensible system (e.g., their employee who was in charge of my deferment was able to contact me through e-mail, but I was unable to directly contact her at all except through mail.) I still have yet to receive an apology from anyone for their mistakes, and I honestly hope karma hits them for how difficult they make things for borrowers. It’s unbelievable. Definitely refinancing ASAP.
My daughter has been trying to sort out her loan with these folks for several years now. They do not follow through on requests and agreements. When you get them on the phone, they are “unable” to provide any information that would show good faith effort to validate anything they tell you they are doing….no copy on an email, no amortization schedule, no confirmation of the “ticket” sent to their client…no nothing! They have failed to establish a plan that they promised on at least 2 occasions, failed to process an address change, failed to properly apply payments, and failed to take responsibility for any of the errors and miscommunication on their part. They have also failed to communicate in any meaningful way to help her sort out her issue. We have reached out to the school to have them intervene. Will be posting a complaint with BBB as well to ensure others are aware of the very poor service and predatory practices.
You might also consider contacting your ombudsman. Here’s an article to learn more about that.