Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Navient Second Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Jen Earyes, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Hello. Good morning, and welcome to Navient's earnings call for the second quarter of 2025. With me today are David Yowan, Navient's CEO; and Joe Fisher, Navient's CFO. After the prepared remarks, we will open up the call for questions. Today's discussion is accompanied by a presentation, which you can find on navient.com/investors. Before we begin, keep in mind our discussion will contain predictions, expectations, forward-looking statements and other information about our business that is based on management's current expectations as of the date of this presentation. Actual results in the future may be materially different from those discussed here. This could be due to a variety of factors. Listeners should refer to the discussion of those factors on the company's Form 10-K and other filings with the SEC. During this conference call, we will refer to non-GAAP financial measures, including core earnings, adjusted tangible equity ratio and various other non-GAAP financial measures that are derived from core earnings. Our GAAP results description of our non-GAAP financial measures and a reconciliation of core earnings to GAAP results can be found in Navient's second quarter 2025 earnings release, which is posted on our website. Thank you, and I now will turn the call over to Dave.

Thanks, Jen. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining the call and for your interest in Navient. This morning, we reported results that demonstrate our ability to generate high-quality loan growth, efficiently finance our lending activities and deliver on our commitment to improve our operating efficiency. Also during the quarter, provision expenses are elevated due to several factors. Joe will take you through these results in a few minutes. Before I turn it over to him, let me touch on a few highlights in the quarter. First, we delivered another strong quarter of loan origination growth. We originated $443 million in refinance loans this quarter. This is twice the volume from the same period last year. As a result, our total refi originations for the first half of the year have more than doubled even while benchmark rates were generally comparable to the year ago period. These strong originations underscore our ability to attract high quality and high average balances. Second, I'd like to comment on recent legislation passed into law earlier this month. This legislation introduced changes to federal student loan programs, which will take effect over time, and we believe will expand our opportunities with our targeted customer segment across our product set. The change that has received most of the headlines is the way the government will lend to graduate students. The bill will eliminate the Grad PLUS loan program at the end of June next year. Grad PLUS originations were roughly $14 billion. The private in-school graduate market in which we participate was roughly 10% of the Grad PLUS originations. The elimination of Grad PLUS is one important change in the federal loan ecosystem that increases our future opportunities in a customer segment we know well. The bill also changes borrowing limits across federal loan programs.…

Thank you, Dave, and everyone on today's call for your interest in Navient. In the second quarter, we reported core earnings per share of $0.20. Adjusting for regulatory and restructuring expenses, we earned $0.21 on a core basis. In the quarter, we demonstrated strong loan origination growth, experienced continued low prepayment speeds on our portfolio and reduced our operating expenses in line with our long-term efficiency initiatives. Provision expense in the quarter reflects a less benign macroeconomic outlook and this quarter's trends in delinquency rates. I'll provide further detail on our results by segment, beginning with the Federal Education Loan segment on Slide 6. The net interest margin for Q2 was 70 basis points, 9 basis points higher than the first quarter. This exceeded the high end of our guided range of 45 basis points to [ 60 ] basis points. We now expect our full year NIM to range between 55 basis points and 65 basis points. The increase in the quarter was driven by a stable rate environment and historically low prepayment activity. Prepayments were $228 million in the quarter compared to $2.5 billion a year ago. Compared to the prior year, our greater than 90-day delinquency rates increased to 10.1%. The charge-off rate remained flat at 14 basis points and forbearance rates decreased to 12.8%. The provision expense for the quarter for the FFELP portfolio is largely driven by the increase in delinquencies and the expected extension of the portfolio as the prepayments remain at historically low levels. Now let's turn to our Consumer Lending segment on Slide 7. Total loan originations in the first half of the year doubled to just over $1 billion compared to a year ago. This is a strong start to the year, driven by the substantial growth in refi originations. These…

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Bill Ryan with Seaport Research Partners.

First question, obviously, kind of relates to the reserve true-up that you took in the quarter. Investors are kind of questioning, at this point, do you think you have everything kind of encompassed in the reserve rate? What's the possibility we might see some additional true-ups in the future? And kind of correlate that, if you can, into the delinquency because your FFELP delinquencies 30 plus actually improved a little bit quarter-over-quarter. The consumer looked, I believe it was flat quarter-over-quarter. So maybe you can talk about what you're seeing in terms of inflows as well.

Yes. Thank you, Bill. And you're correct. We are seeing positive trends in our early-stage delinquencies. So you mentioned the FFELP 30 plus, but both on the private side and the FFELP side in the 30 to 60 days and the 60 to 90 days, we saw improvements across the board there. So obviously, a large piece of what we saw happening in both the FFELP 90 plus day delinquencies and the private 90 plus day delinquencies is a result of the disaster forbearance. Having said that, we did see elevated levels of delinquencies versus our own internal expectations. And it's something that we'll continue to monitor. But at this point, we feel appropriately [indiscernible] provided from an allowance perspective.

Bill, the only thing I would add is there's also a change this quarter in the macroeconomic outlook. We get those scenarios as many firms do from a third-party provider. Those are a little weaker than they were in the first quarter. That's about half of the back book provision expense in the quarter. And so obviously, that's another variable in what the going-forward provision expense can be.

Okay. And just as a follow-up question in terms of the EPS guidance, you sort of look at it, it kind of implies $0.50 to $0.60 in the second half of the year. I believe consensus right now, it's about $0.52. The TSA costs are $0.24 for the full year. Now that's down from $0.26 that you highlighted in Q1. But as I remember, MOHELA and Healthcare were slightly accretive to earnings, revenues offsetting is more than offsetting expenses slightly. So I believe the drag, if you will, on the TSAs is going to be a bit higher than '24 in the back half of the year. And if you could maybe quantify that amount because I think investors would like to know what a potential exit earnings run rate might look like.

Yes. So I'll try to answer that. And if you have a follow-up to my answer, please feel free. So in terms of the TSA expenses for this quarter, we had $13 million related to the TSAs, of which that's offset by $14 million of revenues, to your point. The healthcare services TSAs did end in the quarter as well as it was related to MOHELA. So going forward, the way I think about that is just a little over half of that expenses and revenues is actually associated with the government services TSAs. So call it about $8 million to $9 million going forward, and that's offset by the revenue. So we still anticipate that to occur through the back half of this year. Obviously, both parties are working to exit that TSA as efficiently as possible, and it's a benefit to both sides. But for modeling purposes, I would assume to just keep that through the back half of the year. As it relates to the $0.24 versus the $0.26 last quarter, that's because we have achieved some of those expense savings already into this quarter. And so as Dave mentioned, we set out with ambitious operating expense reduction targets. We have achieved some of that, and that's reflected in the update of the $0.24. But if you think about that going forward of what's going to come out, ultimately, that $0.24 will all be taken out.

Our next question comes from Sanjay Sakhrani with KBW.

I guess the first question is, can you talk about the Grad PLUS reform and sort of the specific opportunities that you guys see arising from that? What's your first cut at it?

Yes. Let me try to synthesize and elaborate on some of the remarks that I made in my opening remarks. Grad PLUS elimination is a substantial and significant expansion of opportunities that we have with graduate students. There is different perspectives about the timing, size and the customer mix of that opportunity, but it seems clear to us that expansion is in terms of integer multiples, not percentage of the current opportunity that we're presenting. We have leaned into the graduate population, both in our in-school and refi products, and they represent roughly half of our loan origination volume. And I think it was a year ago that I got a question about an exit of a large competitor from the private space. And when asked about our capacity or willingness to pursue some of that volume, I talked about being in our swim lane, right? The graduate student is our swim lane. And so that swim lane has gotten deeper or wider or whatever way you want to describe it. We've got the products, the loan distribution channels and the customer experience that we know attract grad students. We also have through this quarter's ABS issuance, I think, clear demonstration of strong investor demand for those originations as well. If you look at -- there's about 80% of grad school lending occurs at roughly 200 schools. We've been working since we re-entered the loan origination business to get on the preferred lending list of many schools. And we're on roughly 2/3s -- the preferred lending list on roughly 2/3s of those schools. There are a couple of dozen schools, graduate schools that don't have private lending list. They rely entirely on Grad PLUS currently. So the size of that opportunity, I think, is yet to be determined, but it…

No, that's great. I guess that leads me to my second question on the strategic actions update. I know you guys are expecting Phase 2 update in the second half. I mean does that kind of encourage you more towards the side of leaning in and sort of invest towards growth initiatives? Because I'm just trying to think through these opportunities and like how much more muscle you need to build in order to take advantage of them? Do you have that capability inside of what you have right now? Or would you need to make investments to sort of address that -- this opportunity?

Yes. So I think I'll go back to what we said in January, what Ed and Joe and I talked about in January. The Phase 2 transformation review is focused on really 3 things. One is what are our opportunities to grow -- there's a cost of equity valuation question that I think we've talked about before. It's a bit of a chicken and egg exercise almost with the current valuation of our shares, investing $1 and having them be worth less than the $1 isn't very exciting. But we also understand that if we could generate some growth and create a narrative and a story and demonstrate to people that we have an opportunity to grow and grow in a profitable way and in an accelerated way, that could also reduce our cost of equity. And then we think there's still opportunities for us to take out additional expenses. And so before the year is out, we're planning to come back to you and share that with you. In terms of the opportunities that I just talked about in the graduate loan space, we've got -- we have that infrastructure in place. Most of what's required there is what I'd say, variable expense. There's expense to originate a loan, as you know, that has a short-term impact on profitability, but a long-term impact on value, we would think. And so the build-out for that is -- would not be large at all. To the extent there's other opportunities we might pursue that may require some other -- some build-outs, but we feel incredibly well placed with what we have to take advantage of the opportunities that are in front of us.

Our next question comes from Mark DeVries with Deutsche Bank.

I was hoping to press you for a little more detail on the opportunity created by the federal student loan reform. Do you have a guess as to how much incremental demand for private -- in-school private student lending this will create? And also just some thoughts on your share of that -- of the grad market and your ability to kind of retain that. I think we've -- our understanding is you're close to 20% market share. If you could just discuss confidence in being able to grab a similar market share of an expanded market.

Yes. Mark, thanks for the question. Look, I think as we look at -- a couple of things. I think one is the data and information on Grad PLUS are not as robust as maybe you'd like it to be. And so that creates a little bit of a -- that creates some uncertainty about exactly what's going to happen to that population. I'd say the other changes in the other loan limits, et cetera, exactly how consumers, parents and students are going to respond to that is uncertain. We all can have a way in looking at the numbers on a macro level and how all that might shake out. But it's really going to depend on at the micro level, each individual family and each individual student depending on how they're going to finance their education. So there's a bunch of uncertainty there. There's some other uncertainties about the size of the market. For example, we don't participate in for profit lending currently. And so you can see different estimates of the size of the current market that might -- some include for profit, some don't include for profit. Our estimates don't. As we look at the expansion and look at our market share, we have good reason to think that the profile of that expansion is going to look very similar to the market today. And so our sort of -- if the market today is -- private loan market is about $1.4 billion, 10% of the $14 billion, we have somewhere around 20% of that today. We feel pretty confident of our ability to maintain that just given what we think the profile is. In terms of the size, there's no doubt it's -- as I said, it's integer multiples of what it is today. And I think it's still a year off. It's going to get phased in. We're all going to learn more about it, but it is significant and substantial for us.

Okay. Great. And just a follow-up on kind of managing balance sheet capacity to meet that opportunity. I mean it sounds like based on your commentary, the strategy for funding would be to securitize and then retain a lot of the economics. Is that accurate? And if so, do you need to start maybe reducing buybacks and payouts to kind of build capital for the coming opportunity?

Yes. I mean, first, I'd say that like it would be a first-class challenge, which I know the team is up to, to make sure that we can finance incremental volume that may come our way. That's why I think I spent some time on the ABS transaction that we did in the second quarter. We received effective advance rate on that of close to 98% of the loan balance. So we raised cash equal to 98% before touching unsecured debt or equity, for example, in the capital stack. If you look at our balance sheet today, one of the reasons we've got the unsecured debt is that the effective advance rate on the private legacy and some of the other assets we have is not as high, not nearly as high as what we achieved in the most recent deal. And so we've had to -- in order to finance those, we have to go to additional sources of financing. The efficiency of the secured market for these high quality, high average balance loans gives us a lot of -- and the interest we had in that particular deal at 6x oversubscribed gives us confidence that there's capacity in a really capital-efficient way for us to finance those kind of loans. The -- we've said and continue to say that our capital allocation between investing in growth and distributing to shareholders is going to depend on the growth opportunities that we see and a function of our ability to buy back future book value. In the second quarter, we were able to do both, invest heavily in growth and distribute. We're going to continue to balance those 2 things off and continue on that strategy as far as possible. We're not changing that outlook at this point in time. And of course, we'll share with you at the end of every quarter what we did with the capital that we've generated and have on hand.

And Mark, I would just add that from a capacity standpoint in the near-term, we have $1.9 billion of additional capacity at our disposal. So we're very well positioned, obviously, going into this upcoming origination year and have a long history with our providers of increasing the capacity as needed, especially for an attractive asset class such as this.

Our next question comes from Moshe Orenbuch with TD Cowen.

Was just wondering on the expense, kind of your expense expectations kind of long-term. I mean, if you look at it, in this quarter, you had, I think, $53 million of expenses between the consumer lending and federal loan businesses and then another $32 million kind of partially offset by $13 million of transition expenses. So that's like $72 million or just under $290 million at an annual rate. Your long- term guide is to $204 million. I guess, how do you get there if you're actually trying to grow the consumer business, right? I would assume you don't -- you can't spend less money there. So how does that work?

No, it's a good point, Moshe. When we talk about our long-term outlook, you'll notice that we do exclude the expenses related to our Earnest brand and the growth in that consumer lending. So the cuts that we've talked about in the past of that $400 million Obviously, a good portion of that is from the exit of the BPS business. That's just under $300 million that you see in terms of the takeout there. If you look a year ago quarter versus this quarter, we've taken out $10 million from corporate shared services. So just on an annualized run rate, that's $40 million of savings. To your point, there's another $13 million of TSA expenses that will ultimately go away. So those are a lot of the moving pieces to get us to that $400 million number. I would say and sort of touching back to Bill Ryan's comment about the $0.50 to $0.60 as well. Keep in mind, between the third quarter and the fourth quarter, we do have those origination costs upfront. So much like a year ago where you saw a tick up in the consumer lending, I would anticipate that you would see a similar tick up from the second quarter to the third quarter for those origination costs, much like you've modeled.

Got it. Okay. And just on the lending -- on the credit side in consumer lending, I guess I'm a little troubled. I mean you had kind of special or provisions in twice each in '23 and '24 kind of now, again, 1 of the 2 quarters so far in 2025. I mean it just seems like it's kind of a 50-50 every other quarter. How should we sort of think about -- I know I heard you say before that you believe you're adequately reserved. I mean everyone always believes they're adequately reserved. But can you maybe just expand on that a little, Joe?

I'd say one thing to back on to is that from the FFELP provision, the dynamic there of the CPR speeds changing, you've seen some of that volatility in years past where you had a bit of a release related to the prepayment speeds being much higher than anticipated. Today, we're in a very slow prepayment just environment. And so I would say that, that's something that we'll continue to monitor there just in terms of as those prepayments either tick up or tick down, of which we expect them to be relatively flat will be one of the key factors in terms of the provision for the FFELP side. So just something to monitor on that front. For the private portfolio, as we do every third quarter as well, we just look at all of our assumptions. So just going back the past several years, we take a harder look. We've been obviously making those adjustments throughout the year here, but it's something that we do look at in the third quarter from a recovery rate perspective, from a long-term CPR perspective, those are all things that we take into consideration to your point about feeling comfortable today, I would say we do in terms of what we've reserved. It's something that we're monitoring. As Dave mentioned, we did take the update on the macroeconomic outlook. And so that is something that could fluctuate from quarter-to-quarter. But overall, the trends we're seeing in the 30 to 60 day buckets, the 60 to 90 day buckets are certainly positive signs, but it's something that we're monitoring.

Our next question comes from Nate Richam with Bank of America.

I just want to follow-up on Bill and Moshe's question on credit and delinquencies in general. I appreciate the color that a lot of the weakness in 90 plus day was from disaster forbearance rolling off. But I recall that some of the weakness in previous quarters was due to like the legacy portfolio being a little weaker. So I'm just curious how the legacy portfolio is performing. And with DQs coming higher than initial expectations, is there a specific cohort that's kind of driving that weakness?

If you think about the legacy portfolio, all of those loans were made pre-2014. And even within that, nearly 99% of them were made before 2012. So obviously, a very well-seasoned portfolio. So I wouldn't point to a specific cohort on the legacy side as it is just very well-seasoned at this point. Delinquency rates while, as I said, improving on the 30 to 60 day and 60 to 90 days, it's something that is still elevated versus our original guidance and forecast for the year. So from that perspective, it's something, as I said, we're monitoring. It's good to see the improvement, but it is still higher than what our expectations were.

Okay. Got it. And then switching gears a little bit to origination volumes. They came in quite nicely this quarter, and you've already done over $1 billion year-to-date. So just curious how you're thinking about your prior guidance of $1.8 billion for the year and how you're thinking of that balance between refinance and in-school loans?

Yes. So we raised our guidance from $1.8 billion to $2.2 billion. If you go back to the original guidance we gave at the beginning of the year when we talked about 30% growth, -- that incorporated about 10% growth in in-school, excuse me, and that gets you to roughly about $400 million of in-school loans and $1.8 billion of refi loans. So the growth so far today that we're seeing in terms of exceeding our expectations is all coming from the refi book early on.

Our next question comes from Rick Shane with JPMorgan.

Look, the guidance for the year highlights the short-term headwinds associated with a pickup in volume. As you look forward to -- from a reserving perspective, I should be clear. As you look forward to the opportunity on the grad side, how will you balance that? Is there an opportunity for you to not only be a make and hold lender, but to offset some of that optical earnings pressure by selling loans as well?

No, absolutely, Rick. So I think it's a good problem to have if we see the origination levels that certainly have been put in a number of those on the call in terms of their forecast. So if we see that occur, I think you'd see a significant rise in that graduate originations. And for us, the attractiveness that Dave mentioned in terms of the last deal that we saw, the investor interest, that's also there in terms of buying those loans. So I think there is a possibility to offset that through selling those loans. It's something that as we've done in the past in terms of being more opportunistic. But I would say in this environment, it's certainly an attractive opportunity for us, especially for the high coupon, high credit quality that comes with graduate loans.

Got it. And then one follow-up on that and something we're wrestling with. Do graduate loans because of the higher income associated with graduates and the potential to repay more quickly, does that impact pricing on loan sales because of the potentially shorter durations?

That is factored in, and you can see that in terms of the last deal, how people view just the mix of the traditional undergraduate loans versus graduate loans and the prepay speeds they associate with them.

Our next question comes from Jordan Hymowitz with Philadelphia Financial Management of San Francisco.

A couple of questions. So if you have a 20%-ish share and right now, the grad and Parent PLUS market is $20 billion to $25 billion. I mean, some competitors have talked about an $8 billion is eligible market. Some have talked about a $10 billion-plus eligible market. I mean, do you have any -- what is your best ballpark guess on where that eligible market is? Because if it's $10 billion and you're 20% of it, then you could be a $2 billion origination market. You know what I'm saying?

Yes. Thanks for the question, Jordan. I'll go back to what I said earlier. It's still a little premature to say exactly what the size is going to be for some of the reasons I described earlier. It's very clear. It's substantial and significant, and we think that growth is going to have a significant representation of the kind of customers that are attracted to our products through our distribution channels, et cetera. You've added Parent PLUS onto Grad PLUS. Our estimates and our remarks are focused at the moment on the Grad PLUS elimination because that's the capacity that we have in place today. That's just putting more volume through the pipes that we've already built that we feel really confident in.

And then to follow-up on Rick's very thoughtful question. If you're going to sell or at least potentially sell some, I mean, the gain on sale margins have raised anywhere from 5% to 13% in the undergrad market over the past 10 years or so that Sallie has been selling. Do you think the grad loans are similar? They're better credit but shorter-term? Has there been any loan sales at the same period of time to know what the range is on that?

Yes. I'm not aware of any sales, but I think you've got the dynamics correct, which is graduate loans in general have higher credit quality, shorter lives because of higher credit quality. This is all compared to the sort of average undergrad pool or the pool that has predominantly undergrad and lower coupons. The ABS issuance was kind of a good test in a financing, not a sale of how investors looked at that piece as that asset class. So I think it's TBD where it is. But if you -- it's going to be the confluence of lower coupon, higher credit quality, generally shorter life than the undergrad -- the median undergrad pool.

And lastly, can you talk about your moat a little bit because a 20% share in the grad market is arguably as strong or stronger moat as the undergrad market because it's much tougher to get into those schools. Is it not? And hence, the ability to disintermediate some of that percentage is quite higher than if you had a 20% share in the undergrad.

Yes. So this is where we've built a set of products and a set of distribution channels. The graduate market is much more heavily online and digital than the financial aid office than undergrad is. We've got a set of customer experiences that Ernest has developed that based on all the work that we do, surprises and delights customers. This is a different customer base than the undergrad. And so we feel really good about the capabilities that we've built and ready to -- are competing against others in that space and competing very successfully, and we're confident we could continue to do that in an expanded market.

Our next question comes from Jeff Adelson with Morgan Stanley.

Unfortunately, I think Jordan took most of my questions already. But maybe just to sort of circle back, David, on your comment about you think that the market expansion should be similar in profile to where it is today. But I guess like one of the questions we get is why there's even really a meaningful graduate in school market today. Can you maybe just discuss why that is, what that profile looks like? And is that just like a combination of higher credit quality borrowers who are able to get a better rate in the private market and maybe some schools who aren't accepted in the federal loan program? And I guess the question on top of that is if we do suddenly see this influx or when we do suddenly see this influx of students with medical debt and law school debt, that does strike me as a different borrower with a different distribution than today. So I guess what gives you confidence that you can sort of maintain that 20% share?

Yes. So I'll handle that one, Jeff. And it's a good question because if you think about the $1 billion market or $1.4 billion market versus $14 billion, that $14 billion market historically also had debt forgiveness associated with it. So if you are a medical student or another profession where you thought that at some point, you're going to get this loan forgiveness. That's obviously a very attractive option to versus a private product. And so where I would say that we captured a lot of our volume and our competitors as well is from those more savvy borrowers that felt that they may not get loan forgiveness, but they were looking to rate shop and compare in terms of the rate that they would get from either working post their undergraduate degree had built up a credit score and went out and sort of shopped their loan versus what the government was offering as a rate. And so that's really where you saw us compete today, because those borrowers no longer will have that option of that debt forgiveness, that is not a factor really going forward, and that's where I think there's a tremendous opportunity for us to expand in that marketplace.

And we think that's what's driving some of the increased traffic in refi as well as people that have taken out those loans and now interest will begin to accrue, the possibility of loan forgiveness is lower than they might have thought it would be at some point in time. And so now the relative value proposition between the federal loan and the private loan has changed, not because we've changed our value proposition, but because the value proposition for a federal loan has changed.

Okay. That's helpful. And I guess just to follow-up on the balance sheet and retaining of economics strategy going forward. I understand in the near-term, that's the strategy. But I guess, just to be clear, you are evaluating either loan sale or capital-light strategy in the future? Or why wouldn't you take a closer look at that? I just want to make sure -- I don't think you explicitly said yet that you're looking at that. But I guess why wouldn't you do that versus just doing more of a balance sheet growth strategy? If you have a lot of demand here, it seems like that would be a pretty attractive alternative.

Yes. So we agree. I think what we're saying is that we always look at -- we have a variety of alternatives and options with significant capacity to finance loan origination volume. To date, we have mostly been a make and hold lender, but not always. We've done some loan sales in the last 5 to 7 years for a variety of different reasons. So we're confident in that capability based on the originations that we have. As and if volume increases significantly, then looking at those options -- we're going to look harder and longer at those options given balance sheet, given capacity. As I said earlier, it will be a first-class challenge for our team to look at the best execution to fund incremental loan volume if we're able to achieve that.

Our next question comes from Ryan Shelley with Bank of America.

Yes, most of mine have been answered, but I guess just one kind of bigger picture one. Has there been any notable change in the behavior in your student borrowers over the last 6 months or so? There's obviously been a ton of changes in federal policy beyond just student loan policy. Has there been any impact, whether that's on delinquency rate or elsewhere? Just any changes in behavior you could call out would be super helpful.

Yes. I would say that -- so a couple of things that Dave mentioned. I know your focus is more on credit, but certainly from a borrower evaluating their finances, that's a big driver of what we're seeing in terms of the refi growth. So the behavior there from having a -- if you have a loan from the direct loan program, you are now evaluating your options, whereas perhaps in the past, you were not and the interest rate wasn't as big of a factor because if you think about the last 4 years, you were paying 0% for a majority of that, and now you're back to your normal stated rates. So we're seeing borrowers evaluate the finances and we're taking advantage of that opportunity through obviously offering an attractive refi product, and we're seeing the growth there. In terms of just the delinquencies in the quarter, I would say, again, pointing back to the fact that we had the large disaster forbearance that was the significant driver of the increase here. Other factors in terms of the macroeconomic outlook, I think you have to take into consideration that some borrowers are coming back to paying those full payments again from the direct loan side, and that is causing some additional pressure as well as other inflationary pressures such as rising rent that you're seeing impact some of the borrowers. But overall, what we've seen, I think, historically is a benefit from, obviously, those borrowers that are going from 0% back to their original stated rates is creating an opportunity for us for growth. And then from a pressure point, it's something that we'll continue to monitor and just see how those trends occur over the next couple of quarters.

Our next question comes from Bill Ryan with Seaport Research Partners.

I just have one quick follow-up. Could you remind us what the return profile looks like, specifically ROE on your in-school loans versus your refinance loans, given your capital allocations?

Yes. So certainly, we target mid -- low to mid-teens ROEs, and that's what our focus is on going forward. So from a credit quality, obviously, very attractive in both the refi and the in-school product. Our FICO scores today for the quarter were above 770. So again, it should give you comfort that these are very high-quality loans. And obviously, the coupon is going to somewhat fluctuate just with the overall interest rate environment and the funding that we receive. And Dave did highlight the fact that we received very attractive advance rates at 98%, some of the highest that we've experienced historically. And as I mentioned, in terms of our other financing from an unsecured debt perspective, they were at near all-time tights for us from a spread to treasury. So we feel very good about our financing capabilities, the coupon we're offering and the credit quality to achieve that long-term target, I'd say, in the low to mid-teens ROEs.

I'm showing no further questions at this time. I would now like to turn it back to Jen Earyes for closing remarks.

Thank you, Daniel, and thank you for everybody who joined the call today. Please contact me if we were not able to take your questions, and we can set up some time. And please contact me if you have any follow-up questions. Thank you. This concludes today's call.

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.