Student Loan Servicer Navient Reaches $120 Million Settlement

Navient, one of the nation’s largest student loan companies, will pay $120 million to resolve allegations that it misallocated payments, steered people into costly repayment plans, supplied the wrong information and ignored borrowers’ pleas for help, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said Thursday. Most of the settlement, $100 million, will be used to make payments to affected customers as determined by the CFPB. The bureau will mail checks to eligible consumers, who do not need to take any action. The CFPB said the recipients could number in the thousands, but information wasn’t available yet about how much each would receive. The remaining $20 million will go into the bureau’s civil penalty fund.