Applying for a student loan for the first time

• You can conclude a student loan agreement at any SEB branch or in the Internet Bank by using your ID-card or mobile-ID.
• Ask your surety providers to sign surety agreements at a branch or in SEB’s Internet Bank in the sum that is at least 1.3 times bigger than the student loan you apply for in the current academic year. The agreement can be signed in a bigger amount so you do not have to increase the sureties every year. If the income of your surety providers is not paid to accounts in SEB, we ask the surety providers to bring their bank statements for the last three months period approved by the other bank; digitally approved bank statements can be sent via e-mail to .
• If you offer property as collateral, then photographs must be presented that enable to evaluate whether the property is suitable for the bank or not.
• The student loan is paid into your account in SEB if all the conditions required to obtain the loan are met.
• If the loan or surety agreement has been entered into in SEB’s Internet Bank, a member of our staff will notify you of the need to submit additional documents.
• You will be given the loan from 1st of October (if you are a first-year student) or 15th of September (if you are no longer a first-year student).

Repeated application for a student loan

• If you have entered into a student loan agreement with SEB, the loan amount for the next academic year will be disbursed automatically, except in cases where:
  • you have declined to receive automatic disbursement
  • there are insufficient sureties
  • you have used property as collateral
  • you study abroad.
• We ask the students who study abroad to submit the certificate issued by your school stating your study programme, form of study, whether you are a full-time or part-time student, the start of your studies, the standard period of study, and the ISCED (International Standard Classification of Education) code. You have to submit a notarised or sworn translation of the certificate if it is not issued in Estonian, English, or Russian. You also have to fill in the application for a certificate of a foreign educational institution.
• If property is used as the collateral, we ask you to provide photographs of the property that enable to evaluate the value of the collateral.
• If you do not want the bank to disburse the loan amount to you automatically, you have to submit an application for refusal of automatic student loan payments in the Internet Bank or at any SEB branch by 12th of September at the latest.
• The student loan is disbursed into your account in SEB if all the conditions required to obtain the loan are met. You will be given the loan from 1st of October (if you are a first-year student) or 15th of September (if you are no longer a first-year student).
• It is possible to receive the student loan every academic year until 1st of June (inclusive).

Transfer your student loan to SEB

You can transfer your student loan from another bank to SEB. This is how you can transfer your student loan:

1. Come to an SEB branch and submit a student loan transfer application (EST).
2. A member of our staff will inform you of our decision on transferring your loan from another bank and you can agree the details of the new student loan agreement and surety agreements with them.
3. It is important that you pay the interest calculated until you signed a new student loan agreement to your current bank after you have entered into a new student loan agreement with SEB. Your current bank will notify you of the exact amount payable.
4. SEB will thereafter pay the amount equalling the balance of your student loan to your account in SEB and this amount is immediately transferred to your previous lender as a repayment of your student loan.
5. You have now repaid your loan to your old bank in full and in the future, you only need to communicate with SEB in respect of your student loan.

Borrower’s checklist and further information for the student loan applicant

Taking a loan is an important decision, one that involves risks. We would like to help you in making an informed decision.

When applying for a loan you should do your homework:

• consider what you need the loan for and how much you need, as well as your sources for repayment of the loan;
• submit truthful and adequate information to us;
• clarify the costs involved in borrowing;
• consider the possibility that your financial situation may deteriorate and that you must also be able to repay the loan even if this happens;
• carefully examine all loan documents (agreement, information sheet, etc.) before signing;
• there are no unsolvable problems and situations, simply different possibilities – we are your partner, whom you should contact well in advance if you ever encounter problems with repaying the loan.

You have the right to request information regarding our lending terms and to receive explanations before concluding the loan agreement as well as during its term. In case you have any questions, please contact us via the general contacts for SEB Pank.
 

When examining the loan conditions and agreement, please pay attention to the following:

1. Student loan information sheet

Prior to the conclusion of a loan agreement we will provide you with a student loan information sheet, on which a brief summary of the important conditions of the agreement is provided. Carefully examine the information presented on the information sheet.

2. Loan currency

We issue the loan in the currency of your residence in Estonia, i.e. in euros.

3. Loan disbursement term and conditions

Each year, the state establishes the maximum amount for a student loan. We will inform you of this amount each year via media before 1 September.

We will disburse the student loan to your SEB bank account after the loan agreement has been signed by both parties; however, not before 15 September of the current academic year and not before 1 October for first-year students.

In order to disburse the loan, all preconditions for loan disbursement must have been fulfilled:

• According to law, you are eligible to apply for a student loan;
• all of the requested documents have been submitted;
• collateral has been appropriately established. Collateral and the extent of establishing the same (limit of liability of the provider of surety or amount of pledge) are specified in the collateral agreement.

4. Right to withdraw from the agreement

After signing the agreement you may still withdraw from it within 14 days, under the conditions set out in the agreement.

5. Additional obligations related to collateral

If the economic situation of a person who provided surety to the agreement has deteriorated, the provider of the surety dies or the value of real estate established as collateral has been impaired, you will have to provide additional collateral by the date specified by the bank.

The real estate provided as collateral must be insured under the conditions set forth in the security contract. In order for us to establish that the insurance obligation has been met, you will have to send us the insurance policy. If you do not submit the policy to us within the specified term, we shall present you with a claim for a contractual penalty.

6. Interest

Interest is a fee, which is paid for using the loan. Interest on the student loan is 5% of the outstanding amount of the loan per year. The interest rate is fixed for the entire loan period.

You will pay interest on 3 November of each year or based on the agreed loan repayment schedule.

7. Loan repayment

You will start repaying the principal amount of the student loan no later than 12 months after graduation, unless you continue with your studies prior to 12 months having passed.

If you terminate your studies, you must repay the loan during a period equal to one and a half times the length of time you spent studying, but which is not shorter than six months and not longer than one-and-a-half times the nominal duration of the study program.

We prepare the payment schedule within 45 days after we have received a notice regarding your graduation or exmatriculation from school. The payment schedule will be sent to your most recently provided postal address.

We debit the payments to be made under the loan agreement from your bank account. As a rule, your monthly payments are equal, i.e. annuity payments, consisting of the principal amount of loan and interest.

8. Early repayment

You may repay the loan prematurely, in full or in part, at any time.

9. Amendment of conditions of your loan agreement

Generally, the conditions of the agreement are amended upon agreement of both parties and this shall be recorded in the annexes to the agreement.

10. Consequences of delaying the payments and violating the agreement

If you do not make the contractual payments on time, we may demand a penalty for late payment at the rate set out in the agreement. If you violate a non-monetary obligation, we will be entitled to charge a contractual penalty at the rate set out in the agreement.

Should you find yourself in arrears, we will first send you a reminder. If the debt remains unsettled, we shall send you a debt notice, for which you will be charged, and we shall also inform the persons providing the surety or pledgers of the debt. If the payments are overdue for a period of more than 45 days, we shall forward the debt information to the payment default registry (Creditinfo Eesti AS).

If you delay making payments, we will be entitled to apply the state guarantee: the state pays your student loan and interest to the bank and the debt collection procedure will be transferred to the state. This way the state will incur a right of claim against you within the paid amount and thus may realise the collateral transferred to it.

We are also entitled to extraordinarily cancel the loan agreement, for example, if you have partly or fully delayed at least three successive payments; also, if the value of collateral is insufficient and you have not fulfilled the obligation to provide additional collateral to the bank.

If you do not repay the loan upon cancellation of the loan agreement, we shall request repayment of the loan and fulfilment of other monetary obligations from the provider of the surety or settle it from the proceeds earned from the sale of collateral. All costs related to debt collection shall be borne by you.

11. Costs related to the loan agreement

Please examine the loan price list, which can be found on our webpage at http://www.seb.ee/eng/price-list.

In addition to loan and interest payments you will pay the monthly fee for the bank account and cover any other relevant expenses, such as ordering a valuation report or insuring the property and, when establishing real estate collateral, also the notary fee and state fee.

12. Complaints and disputes

If you have any complaints concerning our activity, then first try to resolve the issue by negotiating with us. You can read about the general procedure of settling disputes on our website at http://www.seb.ee/eng/legal/how-complain.

If you feel that our answer is not what you expected and still think we have violated your rights when granting the loan, you have the right to turn to the Consumer Protection and Technical Regulatory Authority (Sõle 23a, 10614 Tallinn; www.ttja.ee) or the Financial Supervision Authority (Sakala 4, 15030 Tallinn; www.fi.ee) for advice and explanations.

Furthermore, in order to resolve a dispute you may contact the Consumer Disputes Committee operating at the Consumer Protection and Technical Regulatory Authority or turn to court. A complaint to the Consumer Dispute Committee can also be submitted digitally via Online Dispute Resolution website at http://ec.europa.eu/odr.https://webgate.ec.europa.eu/odr/main/index.cfm?event=main.home.show&lng=ET.