[Blastoderm]

I got a reply about this from E-Petition:

E-Petition: response from the Government
The e-petition asking the Prime Minister to "Change the current student loan interest repayment, to deduct payments monthly not annually" is ongoing. This is a response in advance of the closing date from the Government.

The Government welcomes the opportunity this e-petition has given to clarify understandable confusion on this issue. In particular, we can re-assure the public that interest on student loans is indeed calculated daily and that great care is taken to ensure that no borrower pays too much in repayments.

The confusion arises from the fact that the Student Loan Company updates borrowers' accounts annually. This is largely because the exact details of individual repayments, collected by Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs from employers who deduct the money from the salaries of staff with loans, are only received when firms send in their annual tax returns after the end of each year. Once repayment information is collected, it is sent to the SLC who issue new individual statements showing repayments and the amount outstanding.

But while borrowers' accounts are only updated annually, the SLC is careful to ensure no borrower pays any additional interest as a result of this delay. The total annual repayment received from each borrower is credited to their account as twelve equal monthly payments in the year they were made, and the interest on the remaining balance is calculated on a daily basis each month to match. We can assure you that the Government does not gain any extra income nor does any borrower pay too much interest. It is also worth adding that the interest paid on student loans reflects inflation, and is not a commercial rate of interest like those charged for bank loans.

:shrug: