Re certification

A re certification is  done every 12 month (Every Year) which is also called an annual renewal, simply put, you must re-certify your family size and income Every Year to remain in the Income-Driven Repayment Plan (IBR, ICR, PAYE, REPAYE).

While this may seem like a simple task easily completed with a few keystrokes, enormous numbers of people fail to re-certify causing major issues for borrowers that don’t want to help with this. We have created this step-by-step guide for re-certification to make sure that you can always navigate around any potential issues that could put your IDR plan in jeopardy.

Why you need to be sure to re-certify every year. 

Because it is required to stay in your Income-Driven Repayment plan and a failure to re-certify can have some very unpleasant consequences, such as:

• Sudden increases in your monthly payments (often back to the much-higher Standard Repayment amount)
• Potential overdrafts if you have your student loan payments on auto-debit
• Additional accrued interest if you fail to re-certify and must use forbearance while you update your information (which could extend your forgiveness payoff date)
• Unpaid interest could be capitalized and added to your principal balance (in some cases this may be irreversible)

Re-certification is done around the same time each year when you initially began making payments to your current IDR program. However, you can also re-certify anytime your income or family size changes. This means you could potentially re-certify more than once per year if your situation changes and you need to have your monthly payment adjusted accordingly.

Note: If you have multiple loan servicers, you will need to re-certify with each one individually every year as well as when your income or family size changes.

What you’ll need to re-certify:

There are a few documents you’ll need to submit to complete your re-certification.

• Copy of the Income-Driven Repayment Plan Request Form (the same new application form you submitted originally).
• Copy of your most recent tax return (or employment pay stubs).
• Additional documentation for other loans (if applicable).