Those who have graduated from university could be owed a refund from the Student Loan Company (SLC). If you took out a loan from the SLC for your studies then went into employment, there is a good chance that you’re repayments are taken out automatically from your wage.
This can help you stay up to date with your payments easily without thinking too much about it. However you may also be at risk of overpaying.
Student loan payments are calculated based on a percentage of your income which is over a particular threshold for that loan’s plan type. According to GOV.UK, the current thresholds are in place:
| Plan type | Income threshold (per year) | Income threshold (per month) | Income threshold (per week) |
| Plan 1 | £24,990 | £2,082 | £480 |
|
Plan 2 |
£27,295 | £2,274 | £524 |
|
Plan 4 |
£31,395 | £2,616 | £603 |
|
Plan 5 |
£25,000 | £2,083 | £480 |
| Postgraduate Loan | £21,000 | £1,750 | £403 |
In some cases, your income may change throughout the year, such as if you did overtime, which pushes your weekly or monthly income above the threshold which could alter your automatic loan payments. In this case, you could be eligible for a refund.
If you notice that you made repayments to your student loan throughout the year but your income was below the threshold, you could ask SLC for a refund. However, in some cases you could be contacted by SLC, telling you that you’re owed a refund.
An email from SLC will generally include your Customer Reference Number which will be the same as the one you use to log into your online student loan account. It will then tell you that you’re eligible for a refund and will detail the reason why.
For example, it could state that you made repayments through your salary throughout the 2022/23 tax year despite being under the annual threshold in that year. The email will then contain a link to the gov.uk SLC login site where you can find a form to request a refund.
Before logging into the account, you will need:
- Your customer reference number or email address registered with the account
- Your password
- The answer to your security question, e.g. your mother’s maiden name
Warning over scam emails
Fraudsters may disguise themselves as representatives from SLC and contact you to claim you’re due a refund. They will likely ask you to update your payment information so that the repayment can go through, inadvertently gaining your private banking information.
While SLC does send emails notifying people of a refund which can contain links to a sign in page, if you want to err on the side of caution, you can manually log into the official Student Finance website and log in through there to check if you’re due a refund.
Further details on getting a refund for your student loan can be found here.