Understanding Entitlement Letters

Ray Jackson

Content editor at Student Loans Company.

This post first published: 09 August 2017

Once students have successfully submitted their student finance application and it’s been approved, they’ll be sent an entitlement letter.

The letter is issued to confirm what funding students can get. It contains important information such as the student’s Customer Reference Number, and university and course details.

It also has important information on the next steps the student must take to get paid. These include instructions on signing and returning their declaration form and it highlights the need for them to provide their up-to-date bank details and their National Insurance number.  On the letter we make it clear that we need all these things in order to successfully make their payments.

 

The majority of students are now applying online, which means their main point of contact will be by email. When a student has any outstanding actions to take (for example, sending evidence), we’ll email them and direct them to their online account, where they can check their ‘to-do list’ to find out what they need to do.


In line with our commitment to fulfilling our digital agenda, we’ve improved the format of these letters and now issue two different versions, known as ‘full’ and ‘slim’. Customers who apply on paper get the ‘full’ letter, while those who apply online get the ‘slim’ version.  The slim version contains information on the student’s course, university or college, a payment timetable for their Tuition Fee Loan, a student finance summary, and instructions for logging into the their online account. The ‘full’ letter is more in depth and contains the same information as the slim version, but also includes a list of frequently asked questions as well as a tuition fee and Maintenance Loan breakdown.


If the student wants to see a complete breakdown of their funding they can now view this on their online account.

 

Entitlement letters will continue to have the online declaration attached for the student to sign and return before payments are scheduled, and the uni or college might still ask the student to provide them with their letter when they register.