Sallie Mae provides free FICO credit scores to help customers stay informed of their personal finances

NEWARK, Del., June 26, 2014—To better inform customers and help them make responsible financial decisions, Sallie Mae today announced it will offer student borrowers free access to their FICO Credit Score. Sallie Mae Smart Option student loan borrowers with loans disbursed in the academic year 2014-15 are eligible and will receive their scores quarterly. The company is the first national private education lender to provide this benefit.

“By providing our student borrowers with their FICO Score, we’re empowering them to take greater control of their financial wellness,” says Charlie Rocha, senior vice president, Sallie Mae. “This is the latest in a series of new tools we’re providing our customers to enhance their financial knowledge and empower them to make educated financial decisions.”

The FICO Score is calculated by Fair Isaac Corporation and is the most commonly used credit score in lending decisions such as taking out a private student loan, buying a home, and opening a credit card. When combined with other data elements, the FICO Score helps lenders to determine access to credit and even the appropriate interest rate.

Specifically, eligible Sallie Mae private student loan customers will receive:

• Their FICO Score quarterly with personalized key factors influencing the score.
• Comprehensive FICO Score education online at SallieMae.com/FICO.
• Information on how credit scores are calculated and how they work.
• Frequently asked questions about credit scores.

For the upcoming 2014/15 academic year, Sallie Mae will continue to offer the same highly competitive fixed and variable interest rates, flexible repayment options, and no origination fees or prepayment penalty on its Smart Option Student Loans. New college graduates who maintain their Sallie Mae loan(s) in good standing after graduation may request a one-year interest-only payment period, after a six-month grace period, to help with the transition to full principal and interest payments without extending the length of repayment.

Sallie Mae’s Smart Option Student Loan also includes benefits of on-time payment rewards and tuition insurance. Customers taking advantage of the Smart Reward benefit may earn 2 percent of their scheduled monthly payments that are made on time while in school with the Interest or Fixed Repayment Options and have earned more than $5 million cash back into their Upromise by Sallie Mae accounts. Additionally, built-in tuition insurance covers up to $5,000 of tuition, room, board and other fees not refunded by the school if the student is forced to withdraw for eligible medical reasons.

Sallie Mae recently launched Plan for College, a new online college planning resource at salliemae.com/planforcollege. Plan for College includes interactive tools, calculators and content to help families map out a plan to save and pay for higher education, including the new College Planning Calculator that creates a financial plan for college and the Sallie Mae Scholarship Search that features more than 3 million scholarships offering up to $18 billion in free money.

For more information on the new FICO Score benefit offered by Sallie Mae, please visit SallieMae.com/FICO.

Sallie Mae (NASDAQ: SLM) is the nation’s No. 1 financial services company specializing in education. Whether college is a long way off or just around the corner, Sallie Mae turns education dreams into reality for American families. With products and services that include Upromise rewards, scholarship search and planning tools, private education loans, insurance, and online banking, Sallie Mae offers solutions that help families save, plan, and pay for college. Learn more at SallieMae.com. Commonly known as Sallie Mae, SLM Corporation and its subsidiaries are not sponsored by or agencies of the United States of America.