Following new guidance from the financial services regulator, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) has confirmed it is rolling out new assessment criteria for its treatment of student debt, effective from today (9 April).
Under the new assessment criteria, CBA will exclude Higher Education Loan Program (HELP) debt from home loan servicing calculations for borrowers who can repay their HELP debt within 12 months.
For borrowers who are able to repay HELP debt between one and five years, CBA is also piloting assessing home loan serviceability with a lower assessment rate buffer of 1 per cent.
Dr Michael Baumann, CBA executive general manager home buying, commented on the change to its lending policy, saying: “At CommBank, we are…
