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Common Account Maintenance (CAM) is a standardized event-driven, transaction-based reporting process for lenders, servicers, and guaranty agencies that facilitates the exchange of loan, disbursement, demographic, default aversion and claim information in an electronic format. CAM processing resulted from a standardized effort initiated by the Federal Family Education Loan Program partners, the National Council of Higher Education Loan Programs (NCHELP), and the Student Loan Servicing Alliance (SLSA).
Benefits of CAM
Before CAM, lenders dealt with multiple formats for reporting account information, requesting default aversion assistance and filing claim requests. Not only was this costly, it was complex and did not allow trading partners to fully automate their systems. CAM is designed to replace nonstandard proprietary formats and standardize communication between trading partners -- which will, in turn, allow systems to become more automated. With CAM, all parties use the same record formats whether they are sending or receiving loan data.
Relationship between CAM, CommonLine, and NSLDS Lender Manifest
CAM complements CommonLine. CommonLine facilitates data exchange between schools, lenders, and guarantors, while CAM is designed to facilitate data exchange between lenders/servicers and guarantors. CommonLine focuses on loan origination, guarantee, and disbursement data while CAM concentrates on the post-guarantee reporting between lenders and guarantors.
The National Student Loan Data System (NSLDS) Lender Manifest is a standardized format used by lenders and servicers to report loan-level data to guarantors for submission to NSLDS. The NSLDS Lender Manifest provides a "snapshot" of the entire student loan portfolio of a lender/servicer at a specific point in time. In contrast, CAM files support two-way communication between trading partners to report events as they occur, resulting in more accurate and timely exchange of information.
Prior to exchanging "live" records with ISAC, partners are required to complete a file testing process with ISAC.
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