About Need Access

The Need Access service is offered by Access Group, a nonprofit, mission-driven organization with its roots in higher education.

Mission
We will provide education financing to the broadest range of eligible students, positively influence education financing practices, and provide services valued by students and schools.

Vision
To be an industry leader by ensuring and continually improving the availability of affordable education financing for graduate and professional students and schools.

Why Nonprofit Matters
Our nonprofit outlook aligns us closely with the schools we serve and enables us to place our customers' needs first.

Our sole charge is to ensure that students have access to affordable funding for their education.

When we began to offer the Need Access service in 1994, our goal was to provide a value-added solution that would enable schools to determine eligibility for institutional financial aid. Today, through enhanced technology, we are able to offer an entirely paperless application process to students.

History
The history and growth of Access Group revolve around one basic idea: make affordable financing more accessible to graduate students.

This idea first took shape as the "Law School Assured Access Program." Under the direction of the Law School Admission Council (LSAC), this program initially provided financial access to American Bar Association (ABA)-approved law schools, offering two federally-guaranteed educational loans. This is now known as the Federal Family Education Loan (FFEL) Program.

As tuition and living expenses rose in the following years, it became apparent that the federally-guaranteed loans were inadequate to cover all of a student's expenses. In response to these rising expenses, LSAC created a private loan program, the Law Access Loan (LAL), to supplement the federally-guaranteed loans. In 1993, the program was incorporated as a separate nonprofit organization, Law Access, Inc.

Since then, we have increased our commitment to make affordable financing more accessible to graduate students. We have expanded our private loan program to include the Business Access, Medical Access, Dental Access, Graduate Access, and Health Access loans. Beyond our loan programs, we have designed services and materials specifically for schools and students in the graduate/professional community.

To reflect a diverse and growing suite of programs and services, Law Access, Inc. began doing business as The Access Group, and in 1997, we officially changed the name to Access Group, Inc. As Access Group, Inc., we continue to develop new strategies and services to meet the needs of schools and students.

Our goal is still the same: to provide greater access to affordable financing, and greater access to the information that can help students borrow wisely, manage debt responsibly, and repay loans successfully.

Access Group "Firsts"
Over the years, Access Group has established a history of industry innovations. Our scrapbook shows that Access Group:

- Offered the first private Bar Examination Loan.
- Developed Need Access®, the first fully-electronic financial aid service designed specifically for graduate and professional students.
- Created Loan Line, the first over-the-phone application in student lending.
- Pioneered borrower-based pricing of private student loans (varying loan costs according to the individual borrower's level of credit risk).
- Applied the universal use of credit scores to student loan credit reviews.
- Offered the first fully interactive graduate student loan application on the Web.
- Led the industry in switching to London Inter-Bank Offered Rate (LIBOR) as the index used to set interest rates on private student loans.
- Implemented Instant Credit Review technology for student loan applicants .