PowerFAIDS Enhances CommonLine Support for High-Balance Alternative Loans
As the industry-leading financial aid software system from College Board, PowerFAIDS has enhanced its CommonLine alternative loan support so schools can send and receive records for loans of $100,000 or more with no manual intervention or file manipulation required.
Alternative loans above that threshold require an additional data record under CommonLine standards — historically a manual step that required financial aid offices to edit files by hand before uploading them to their loan servicer's software. That extra work introduced risk of error and slowed down certification for students relying on larger loans to cover the full cost of their education, a scenario especially common at law, medical, and other professional and graduate programs.
With this enhancement, PowerFAIDS closes that gap automatically. When generating a CommonLine send file, PowerFAIDS now identifies loans of $100,000 or more and automatically creates and appends a supplemental @2 record to the file, which can be uploaded into any CommonLine-compliant loan software. PowerFAIDS also now loads response files that contain an @2 record, completing the process end to end.
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This enhancement is especially valuable for PowerFAIDS' professional school clients, where higher loan amounts are the norm rather than the exception — and it's one of several upcoming improvements aimed at reducing manual work across the loan certification process.
About PowerFAIDS
PowerFAIDS is celebrating a record year of new client contracts in 2026. This comprehensive financial aid management solution from College Board has supported hundreds of financial aid offices for more than four decades. Serving institutions of all sizes—from community colleges to major research universities, public and private alike—PowerFAIDS helps institutions deliver aid efficiently.
Developed by financial aid professionals, it streamlines every stage of the process with intuitive tools, automation, and secure data management, empowering schools to serve students with accuracy and care. For more information or to schedule a demo, visit powerfaids.collegeboard.org.