Student loan industry exec appointed to watchdog job

The Trump NEW YORK — administration has hired a longtime student loan indus- try executive to be the federal government’s top watchdog for the $1.5 trillion student loan market.

Robert Cameron will serve as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s new stu- dent loan ombudsman, the bureau said Friday.

It’s a job designed to protect student loan borrow- ers from poor practices in the student loan industry and one of the few positions explicitly named in the DoddFrank Act, the law passed after the 2008 financial crisis that created the bureau. It’s considered the go-to office for borrowers who have complaints about their loans.

Cameron most recently worked at the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency, better known as FedLoan Servicing, as its head of compliance and risk mitigation. PHEAA has been cited for poor industry practices, most notably for how it has handled the troubled Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, a program designed to allow student loan borrowers who work in public service jobs to get part of their loan balances forgiven.

A report written by the Department of Education’s Inspector General’s Office released earlier this year found that FedLoan employees received a “fail” grade on interactions with borrowers 11% of the time, far more than the industry average of 4%.

The CFPB’s student loan ombudsman position has been vacant for nearly a year. Seth Frotman, an Obama administration appointee, quit in protest of the Trump administration’s handling the issue of student loans.