SimpleTuition Expands Offering to Include More Than 100 Student Loan Products from Dozens of Top Lenders

NEWTON, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--With tremendous scrutiny on the student loan industry, SimpleTuition,
Inc. is making it easier than ever for parents and students to make
informed education borrowing decisions. Starting today, SimpleTuition
has significantly expanded the list of lenders and loans available for
consideration via its student loan comparison web site,
SimpleTuition.com.

“The lesson from the recent student loan
scandals should be that borrowers owe it to themselves to shop around,”
explained Kevin Walker, co-founder and CEO of SimpleTuition. “We
want SimpleTuition to be part of a borrower’s
larger quest for college financing. Whether you select a loan via
SimpleTuition or from another source, this is an important decision and
you should do your homework.”

SimpleTuition is on its way to becoming the industry standard for
evaluating student loan options. At SimpleTuition.com, parents and
students can research more than 100 loan products from nearly 50 leading
lenders. Borrowers can compare loan options on an ‘apples
to apples’ basis, manipulate numbers, change
assumptions, sort by loan attributes – all in
real-time. To access the expanded list of loans, site visitors simply
select “Expanded List”
in the “View Loans From”
feature at the top of the loan results page.

“For more than two years, SimpleTuition has
been pioneering interactive tools to aid students and parents in
understanding their student loan options,”
added Walker. “We are proud of our mission to
be an independent and comprehensive source of student loan data –
and with the addition of dozens of new loan products, we can add ‘comprehensive’
to that list of descriptors.”

SimpleTuition is not a lender, and unlike other online student loan
resources, SimpleTuition is not sponsored or owned by a single lender or
financial services company. Similar to other comparison shopping and
search sites, the company may receive a transaction or referral fee if
any of its many Partner products is selected. SimpleTuition clearly
discloses Partner products, and its expanded model includes dozens of
non-partners for a wider choice. The service is free to users.

Colleges and universities can also work with SimpleTuition to present
compliant and arm’s-length loan information
to their families. Whether a school wants to present three loan options
or two hundred and three, SimpleTuition can help.

Loan results can be sorted by monthly payment, total cost of loan,
number of payments, first payment due date and APR –
and results contain detailed information about loan pricing, borrower
benefits and other attributes.

About SimpleTuition, Inc.

Founded in 2005, SimpleTuition is dedicated to helping students and
parents make sense of education financing options. Recently featured as
one of Fast Company’s Top 12 Web 2.0
sites, SimpleTuition offers the leading independent and interactive
solution for researching and comparing private, PLUS, Stafford, GradPLUS
and Federal Consolidation loans. SimpleTuition is headquartered in
Newton, Massachusetts and is funded by Atlas Venture, IDG Ventures
Boston and North Hill Ventures. For more information, visit .

Help and hope for the mortgage weary

Until recently the debts that threw many Floridians into credit counseling were the familiar ones: Big cars with big sticker prices, a fondness for designer labels and exotic vacations and unpaid college loans.

But Tampa Bay area credit-counseling agencies say another sort of client is turning up more often at their doors: Homeowners who can't afford their homes.

Easy credit enticed people to trade up to bigger homes. Now they're shelling out hundreds of dollars more a month to keep up with their adjustable rate mortgages. Higher insurance premiums and property taxes also lay in ambush.

Pinellas County bankruptcy lawyer Jay Weller runs affiliated credit-counseling agencies in Clearwater, Tampa and Port Richey. After handling close to 30,000 cases in his career, he insists home debt has never loomed so large.

"I've never had that many people walk away from their houses before," Weller said. "Real estate is playing a larger role in bankruptcy than in the 15 years I've been doing this."

Angel and Myranda Acosta are among the house owners desperate for financial advice. They moved to Pasco County from Oklahoma in 2004 near the height of the housing boom and paid $139,000 for a three-bedroom, two-bath house in the Moon Lake Estates neighborhood.

Angel made good money as a Verizon salesman but had bad credit. Myranda made less as an office receptionist but had good credit. They felt lucky to get a loan from Fremont Investment & Loan: 100 percent financing with an adjustable rate mortgage starting at 10 percent.

The $1,810-per-month payment is already a struggle for the 30-something couple and it's set to "bloom out" next year by an undetermined amount. Their income and credit preclude them from refinancing.

"No theme parks for us. We pretty much stay around the house. At least the weather's nice," Myranda Acosta said.

Two homeowning friends recently walked away from their mortgage and moved into apartments. Not the Acostas. They haven't missed a payment, but worry about what will happen next year.

Seeking counsel, the Acostas turned up at a recent workshop in Tampa hosted by the Neighborhood Assistance Corp. of America. The nonprofit offers refinancing to subprime borrowers facing foreclosure.

"This is our last hope," Myranda Acosta said.

They're far from alone. The national firm RealtyTrac lists 17,147 troubled properties in Pinellas, Hillsborough, Pasco and Hernando counties. They're properties in preforeclosure, scheduled for auction or seized by the bank.

Many have turned to Consumer Credit Counseling Services of Central Florida. Cities and counties outsource work to the nonprofit agency. Services are free for many people in Clearwater, Largo, Tampa and Pasco.

Making monster house payments on modest salaries has become a Florida ritual. Throw in piles of credit card debt and you have a recipe for financial misery, said CCCS vice president Linda Pichler. Fueled by the housing downturn, Consumer Credit Counseling served a record 8, 000 people last year, mostly in the Tampa Bay area and Orlando.

Most people wait too long - until their home is on the brink of foreclosure - before approaching a counselor, many of whom cut their teeth in banking, Pichler said. One of the biggest mistakes she sees: People who strain to pay off their credit cards but blow off the home loan.

"The mortgage companies are not yelling, so they often get paid last," Pichler said. "Maybe people are still current on their credit card but they're losing their homes."

Horace Morgan, in addition to his realty and mortgage business in Brandon, also dispenses credit counseling for free. Morgan notes that rising home values masked a variety of financial sins. Now falling home values have stripped off the mask.

Four potential clients who called last week all had the same problem: They used their home equity as an ATM and now are almost broke.

"All four owed more money than their homes were worth and all four were behind on their mortgages," Morgan said.

Morgan counsels lifestyle changes: dump the designer clothes and shoes, stop leasing the expensive car, trim foreign travel and eating out each weekend.

"They have to be retrained and change their lifestyle," he said.

Desperate people are vulnerable people, and credit counselors warn of vultures who prey on that weakness. Some sham credit counselors collect money only to damage clients' credit further or else scam people out of their homes.

Last month, a federal jury found five Tampa residents guilty of cheating homeowners into selling their homes to avoid foreclosure, then siphoning off more than $2-million in home equity.

In addition to its "credit rebuilding workshops," CCCS is holding a seminar Thursday in Tampa called the "ABCs of avoiding foreclosure."

"We plan on having these on a pretty regular basis," Pichler said.

Often, consumers can be their own worst enemy. Playing with easy credit can be habit-forming.

"I have people who move their credit score from a 500 to 700 and the first thing they do is buy a new car, " Morgan said. "They make the same mistakes all over again."

James Thorner can be reached at or 813 226-3313.

[Last modified May 13, 2007, 00:54:24]

New Century Shuts Lending Unit as No Buyers Emerge (Update2)

New Century Financial Corp., the
biggest subprime mortgage company to declare bankruptcy, will
close its home-lending unit and fire about 2,000 people after
failing to find a buyer.

Chief Executive Officer Brad Morrice informed employees in a
conference call today, said Dan Gagnier, a spokesman for the
Irvine, California-based company. A court-administered auction
continues for the servicing business, which mails out monthly
statements and handles collections, Gagnier said. Separately, New
Century said KPMG LLP quit as the company's auditor.

New Century stopped taking applications in early March as
defaults by borrowers surged and bankers cut off its credit. The
company also faced state and federal probes of its lending
practices. It filed for bankruptcy April 2 and started trying to
sell the origination unit even as rival subprime lenders were
already seeking buyers.

``There's a lot of platforms available, and the New Century
platform hadn't originated any loans in 60 days,'' said Ron
Greenspan, a senior managing director at FTI Consulting Inc. who
is acting as financial adviser to New Century's unsecured
creditors. ``They were at a competitive disadvantage.''

New Century made about $60 billion in loans last year, and
employed 7,200 people at the end of 2005. It announced 3,200
dismissals when it filed for bankruptcy.

Housing Boom

The company rode the U.S. housing boom to become the largest
independent mortgage lender to subprime borrowers, only to
collapse as interest rates rose and home prices fell. Like rival
firms, the company lowered its lending standards to keep business
flowing after demand slumped.

The lending business consisted of a network of 57,000
independent mortgage brokers who locate borrowers and the
employee loan officers who handle applications and approvals.

The platform also included computer software and equipment
used to analyze applications, as well as 262 retail branches and
34 regional operations centers in 20 states.

``It is very expensive maintaining that platform,'' FTI's
Greenspan said. ``All the employees were still being paid and you
have rents, and if there was not a forthcoming bidder, the
committee did not feel it was a worthwhile expenditure to
continue to support it.''

The deadline to submit bids for the lending unit was
yesterday, and the job cuts take effect tomorrow, Gagnier said.

Carrington Capital Management LLC has agreed to bid at least
$139 million for the mortgage-servicing business.

Auditor Resigns

U.S. prosecutors opened a criminal probe of accounting
errors and trading in securities at New Century, the company said
March 2 in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange
Commission. Since then, more than a dozen states have told the
company to halt operations, citing complaints from borrowers that
their loans weren't being funded.

New Century said in a regulatory filing today that KPMG had
resigned as the independent auditor on April 27, citing an
internal investigation of the company's accounting. New Century
said that since it's in liquidation, it doesn't expect to name a
replacement.

The company's shares fell 2.5 cents to 80.5 cents in over-
the-counter trading today. In May, 2006, they sold for as much as
$51.45.

Subprime Loans

Subprime mortgages are made to people with blemished credit
records or heavy debts, which make them among the riskiest for
lenders. The loans typically charge 2 to 3 percentage points more
than those to people with stronger credit profiles, and often
carry adjustable interest rates that can cause payments to jump
in later years, making defaults even more likely.

Subprime loans accounted for 86 percent of all New Century
loans last year, the company said in court filings.

New Century was founded in 1995 by a trio of former managers
at Option One Mortgage -- now a unit of H&R Block Inc. --
including current Chief Executive Officer Brad Morrice. In the
late 1990s the company survived an industry shakeout that led to
the bankruptcies of bigger rivals including United Cos.

Late payments on U.S. subprime mortgages reached a four-year
high in last year's final quarter, the Mortgage Bankers
Association reported. At least 50 mortgage companies have halted
operations or sought buyers since the start of 2006, according to
Bloomberg data.

Seeking Buyers

The surge in defaults forced Kansas City, Missouri-based
NovaStar Financial Inc. to hire Deutsche Bank AG last month to
advise on ``a range of strategic alternatives,'' including a
sale. H&R Block Inc. last month agreed to sell its subprime
mortgage unit, Option One, for 40 percent less than originally
sought. Fremont General Corp. said April 16 that it had agreed to
sell its mortgage business to an unidentified buyer.

Bose George, an analyst at Keefe Bruyette & Woods in New
York, said it's ``not all that surprising that capacity has to
get pulled out of the industry.'' He's forecasting that new
subprime mortgages will decline by 30 percent to 50 percent over
the next 12 to 18 months.

``Given the amount of excess capacity, you're going to have
to shut a lot of these platforms or pare a lot of them down
significantly,'' George said.

To contact the reporter on this story:
Bradley Keoun in New York at
.

Nigeria: Skye Bank Releases Naira Credit Card

Frances OviaLagos

Skye Bank Plc has introduced a new credit card denominated in naira, into the banking industry for customers. The primary objective is to offer a differentiated card payment value propositions to the discerning target market that would address the specific needs of each market taking into cognizance its peculiarities. The scheme developed by e-Channels Group of the bank is targeted at customers and non-customers of the bank who have verifiable and regular sources of income.

The new product has two variants of Classic and Premium. The Skyecard credit Classic is targeted at the low income earners who form a sizable number of the bank's current customer base, it renders benefits derivable from carrying a debit card while Premium is targeted at a wide market, differentiated by income bracket and credit profile such as income, employment structure, credit history and so on. It provides both secured and unsecured finance for customers and non-customers of the bank. Mr. Adesola Akinfemiwa, Managing Director, Skye Bank who expressed delight at the acceptance rate and transaction volume of debit cards, which the bank has been a leading promoter in the banking industry, said the new credit card would be very useful to customers as it would save them stress of carrying cash around at the risk of armed robbery attack. He said the intention of the bank is to put the cards in the hands of people who want cash before their next pay day.

General Manager, Retail Banking, Skye Bank, Mr. Dotun Adeniyi, explained that the new credit card introduction is in furtherance of the bank's marke leadership in card business. "As we launch these two credit cards, those who buy into it will enjoy the good things that are happening here and we will continue to maintain market leadership," he said.

Mr. Chuma Ezirim, Assistant General Manager, e-Channels Group, Skye Bank said the card process comprising issuance, operations and management is fully automated and runs on a robust credit card management system and that credit scoring and assessment module makes it possible for applications to be processed on-the-spot while there are no restrictions on usage.






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He said the size of the market is very large but very challenging and this i formed the bank's reason taking its time to offer to the market a credit card scheme that runs on a well tested, best in class and robust credit card management system. He said the scheme is expected to receive the required support from the government and Central Bank as it will complement various federal government initiatives towards the promotion of customer credit policy as incorporated in the National Economic Empowerment Development Strategy (NEEDS).

Ezirim who explained the features of the credit card said it is an electronic local card payment scheme which will be used to avail credit lines to individuals that has interest fee period of up to 30 days, interest rate of 18 per cent per annum on utilized credit only, flexible limit-based on income of cardholder; free internet and mobile banking services; SMS alerts on all transactions and two years validity period for the card, among others.

"A large proportion of Nigerians need extra cash outside monthly income to meet personal financial commitments, which they cannot easily obtain from friends and family members, and would like to pay back inn a convenient manner. "Skyecard credit avails the average Nigerian this opportunity," he added.