What Student Loan Documentation Do You Need?

If you are unsure about the details of your student loan debt, there is documentation that can help:

• Student loan statement: This is sent out to all borrowers with debt if the IRD has their current address. It contains every single transaction including every single interest charge and payment. In some cases it can be over a hundred pages long. The student loan statement states your total debt, how much of this is overdue arrears, and your annual obligations. We don't find it useful if we are looking at issues like total interest or total penalties. If you have any debt but you are not receiving this statement then something is wrong.
• MyIR student loan summary: This states your original debt borrowed, total penalties, total interest, total payments, and adjustments. Most adjustments relate to an amnesty in around 2008 but this should be checked if you are unsure.  It does not state how much of your debt is overdue arrears. You can obtain your MyIR by logging in to the IRD system. It is a one page document that is useful in quickly evaluating your best options (in combination with details about your circumstances).
• Student Loan Statement: This is a one page spreadsheet provided by the IRD. It is similar to the MyIR information, but it has details of charges and payments on a yearly basis.
• Original loan documentation and details of original amounts charged to the student loan account. Sometimes, for example, people are unsure if the original debt amount stated by the IRD is correct, or they were owed a credit by the tertiary institution and need to check if this has been applied to their account. Requesting the full original documentation will assist in checking this. The documentation can usually be requested through the IRD, but in some cases the request needs to go through Study Link.
• Travel records: If the IRD has wrong travel dates for you your debt amount is probably wrong. It needs to be correct so that you know what you are dealing with. The IRD can advise the travel dates that they hold for you. A detailed break down can be requested from Customs.

Our general experience is that the agencies involved will provide the documentation upon request, but if there is an issue you can make a formal request under the Official Information Act and/or Privacy Act. 

Please let us know if you have any questions or feedback about your experiences in obtaining documents.