Sallie Mae Bank is a financial institution affiliated with Sallie Mae, the company widely known for its student loan business. The SLM Corporation (the formal name for Sallie Mae) is a publicly traded (NASDAQ: SLM) education finance corporation with a plethora of divisions and subsidiaries that offer an array of debt management services and business products. Sallie Mae Bank is a recent venture by the company into the retail banking space.
The bank offers three different types of savings products on its personal banking side, including Money Market and savings accounts, and Certificates of Deposit (CDs). DepositAccounts.com has featured Sallie Mae’s Money Market account in the past for its competitive rate offering, and it is still usually one of the top offerings in the country. The MMA comes with check writing capabilities and has no minimum balance requirement, no monthly fees, and no tiered interest rates. The savings account offering is very similar, having no monthly fees or minimum balance requirements, as well as a comparable interest rate. The main difference between Sallie Mae’s Money Market and savings account is that the savings account offers a 10% annual match on Upromise rewards, whereas the Money Market account comes with check writing but no rewards. The bank’s CDs are available in 12-, 36-, and 60-month term lengths and come with fixed rates and minimum initial deposit requirements. Sallie Mae Bank also makes undergraduate and graduate student loans available, as well as family loans for kids in K-12 grades.
Sallie Mae Bank online banking provides the only way for customers to access their deposit accounts, as the bank has no physical branches. The web-based platform gives account holders the ability to perform functions like direct deposit, bill pay, and funds transfers, but because the bank doesn’t offer a checking account to the public, customers should be careful to avoid going over the six transactions per month limit.
Sallie Mae Bank is a subsidiary of the SLM Corporation, which was created in 1972 as a government-partnered mutual loan entity. In 2004, the company permanent severed ties with the U.S. government and became a private sector company. A year later, in 2005, the bank was started in order to complement its loan business. In the summer of 2013, Sallie Mae announced that it was going to divide its education loan management business from its banking business in order to offer more consumer lending products on its banking side. Sallie Mae Bank is currently headquartered in Murray, Utah, and maintains it customers’ deposit accounts through its online banking system.
If you ’trust the process' everything works great! Not being the trusting type I tried to understand the relationship between Savebetter and its listed banks. Apparently SaveBetter's custodian bank 'Lewis and Clark' maintains an account at their client banks (like SallieMae) and Savebetter deposits are aggregated to this account. So the client banks don't need to deal with many retail accounts. Savebetter then does all the customer facing work like showing account balances and processing retail transactions. They claim (taking them at their word) that the FDIC insurance passes-through if a client bank fails. I guess SaveBetter gets some money from their client banks for marketing and recordkeeping.
Overall, the process seems to work remarkably well so far given its complexity (haven't taken money out though).
Only gottcha's so far is that their is no option to collect accrued interest from CDs prior to maturity and their ChatBot while not ChatGPT quality is reasonably complete. It answered how to set a beneficiary for example. Also SaveBetter was a bit sketchy about how (the one) external bank account allowed is set or displayed. I tried getting someone with a pulse to answer a question but got music-on-hold. Be advised.
I had a little trouble finding this CD as it's only open on the Savebetter platform, not the Sallie Mae web page. Once I got there, it was very easy to set up a platform wide account and then to open the CD. Also an easy process to link and pull funds from an external account. The transfer was complete in a day or two. You have the option to renew the maturing CD or have the funds transferred back to your linked account. Glad I got to lock in 5% for a 27 month period.
Please do not get a loan with Sallie Mae. They have destroyed my life and countless other lives with their predatory business practices and horrible treatment and harassment toward their borrowers.
I created a change.org petition to stop Sallie Mae because they have circumvented legal recourse for their actions long enough and its disgusting at this point, every signature helps:
https://chng.it/KmmChtrd4J
I just spoke to them today about the way they have treated my elderly grandmother and cosigner, because they have harassed her with calls that have alarmed her, insinuating that she owes something on a loan that hasn't even matured yet. They called up to 4 times a day and even estranged family members who I have never been associated with.
After months of inducing unsurmountable stress and anxiety in me and my grandmother, they admitted they shouldn't have been calling her and apologized. They never addressed their behavior and they immediately moved to get money from me. They still called my grandmother after being sent a cease and desist email and spoke to the consumer advocacy and they said they removed her, because it appears Sallie Mae knows they can circumvent the law. So their actions and the detriment to mine and my grandmother's wellbeing they caused had no consequence for them.
During all this harassment I am still in school and I lost my job. Just today I explained this and tried to defer my loan payments and they tried to tell me that I don't qualify because it says my course is part time. It is a part time masters program and that is the program they approved me in for the loan, that is not an enrollment status I chose, the program itself is called a professional part time masters because it involves distance learning and is structured differently.
They truly are a loan shark disguised in a shiny 'reputable' wrapping thanks to the broad scope of schools they are willing to cover. But they don't have any integrity, they will approve heinous loan terms to charge someone amounts knowing they can never feasibly pay, in my case someone with no income on government benefits (my grandmother). Their finance charges are absolutely absurd. The finance charge for one of my loans is nearly double what I borrowed (JUST the finance charge). That amount was justified by a cosigner they required, who is an elderly senior citizen with zero income and has been on government aid for years.
I am assuming they can get away with this because they have monopolized private student loans. Since I didn't qualify for a federal loan for my program/school (this seems to be the case with a lot of overseas schools) you have no choice but to take a Sallie Mae loan. A lot of these schools even say on their website the only private student loan option is Sallie Mae. So you are financially entrapped to accept whatever loan terms they put in front of you. They then harass you, drive you insane through incessant phone calls, texts, etc. with no regard for the mental or physical anguish they cause you.
They will absolutely set you up to fail - I know Im not the first and I won't be the last, there are a ton of stories from people who cannot get out of debt with Sallie Mae because they purposely set them up with egregious terms knowing that the person will never be able to pay it off and get out from under. They basically financially entrap you,
Please do not fall for their trap. Please do not put yourself in this position. They don't care if they harm vulnerable populations like the elderly. They don't care about how they treat their borrowers.
I have had CDs with Sallie Mae in the past and had no issues at all. It was easy and a positive experience. I had to search a bit to find the 27 month 5% CD but I found it! And signed up. Fingers crossed that it is as easy as last time. So far it definitely seemed easy and quick. Thank you again, Sallie Mae!
Overall | |
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FDIC Certificate # | 58177 |
Year Established | 2005 |
Employees | 1772 |
Primary Regulator | FDIC |
Profit Margin | |
---|---|
Return on Assets - YTD | 4.13% |
Return on Equity - YTD | 44.26% |
Annual Interest Income | $1.31B |
Assets and Liabilities | ||
---|---|---|
Assets | Q2 2024vs Q2 2023 | $28.73B$27.67B |
Loans | Q2 2024vs Q2 2023 | $18.97B$19.25B |
Deposits | Q2 2024vs Q2 2023 | $21.07B$20.52B |
Equity Capital | Q2 2024vs Q2 2023 | $2.83B$2.48B |
Loan Loss Allowance | Q2 2024vs Q2 2023 | $1.27B$1.36B |
Unbacked Noncurrent Loans | Q2 2024vs Q2 2023 | $125.2MM$136.6MM |
Real Estate Owned | Q2 2024vs Q2 2023 | $0$0 |
Always verify rates and promotions with the bank or credit union. We are not Sallie Mae Bank; we are a rate comparison website and cannot provide official rates or promotions.
* The APY shown varies based on the deposit amount. Expand the listing to see APYs for other deposit amounts.
APY | MIN | MAX | ACCOUNT NAME | VIEW DETAILS |
---|---|---|---|---|
4.20% | $0 | - | High-Yield Savings | |
4.10% | $0 | - | SmartyPig Account |
APY | MIN | MAX | ACCOUNT NAME | VIEW DETAILS |
---|---|---|---|---|
4.20% | $0 | - | Money Market |
Sallie Mae Bank is an Internet only bank and does not have branch locations. Its headquarters is located at 175 S West Temple - Salt Lake City, UT 84101