Finance Minister Gives Reason For One SLB Guarantor

Minister of Finance and the Public Service, Dr. the Hon. Nigel Clarke, says the decision to allow students seeking a loan from the Students’ Loan Bureau (SLB) to only need one guarantor was done out of a need to balance accessibility with sustainability.

“The SLB doesn’t work if it can’t be sustained, it doesn’t work if monies lent are not paid back. But similarly, our policy objectives are not achieved if the loans are not accessible to people,” Dr. Clarke said, at a virtual post Budget Debate Press Conference, held today (March 11).

“So, here we are making an attempt to making it accessible by putting a less burdensome standard for guarantors and at the same time not removing it entirely, because to do so would compromise sustainability,” he added.

Effective April 1, students seeking a loan from the SLB will now only require one guarantor instead of two.

Dr. Clarke also said while the requirement has changed, persons can still use two guarantors.

“By going from the requirement from two to one guarantor, that doesn’t mean that you can only have one guarantor. If it is useful for you as an applicant to have more than one, because someone doesn’t want to be a sole guarantor, that is a decision you can make,” he noted.

“What we are saying is that if you can only manage to find a single guarantor, the State will not withhold the opportunity from you to borrow from the Students’ Loan Bureau. This is in response to feedback we have received over a number of years, that persons, particularly persons from lower-income brackets, find it difficult to find more than one guarantor,” Dr. Clarke added.

During the 2020/21 fiscal year, the SLB received almost 14,000 applications for student loans, an increase of five per cent over the previous year.