Guidance

Welsh partial loan cancellation

Full-time students who have taken a Maintenance Loan from Student Finance Wales could get up to £1,500 cancelled.

To qualify for this scheme offered by the Welsh Government you must:

  • have been a full-time student
  • have taken a Maintenance Loan from Student Finance Wales since academic year 2010/11
  • have started repaying or made a voluntary repayment

How much of the Maintenance Loan will be cancelled

When you start repaying your student loan, the Welsh Government could cancel up to £1,500 from your full-time Maintenance Loan balance. If you take out a loan in more than one academic year, the cancellation will be applied to the first Maintenance Loan which you took out. The cancellation amount will be subject to the amount of your first repayment. Find out more at www.gov.wales/student-finance-partial-cancellation-scheme.

If your income at the moment is too low to be making repayments, you’ll still be able to get part of your Maintenance Loan cancelled if you start making repayments in the future.

You can only get the cancellation once. You cannot get the cancellation if you have any outstanding charges, costs, expenses or penalties in relation to your loan or if you’re in breach of your loan agreement.

You don’t have to be making repayments through your salary to qualify for the £1,500 cancellation, you can make a voluntary repayment online of £5 to activate it.

Examples

Once you’ve finished or left your course, the amount of cancellation will depend on:

  • how much is repaid
  • the balance after the repayment has been made
First Maintenance Loan balance First repayment amount Outstanding balance Amount cancelled
£200 £200 £0 £0
£1,000 £5 £995 £995
£3,000 £1,000 £2,000 £1,500
Published 13 August 2019
Last updated 20 July 2023 + show all updates
  1. Examples have been updated

  2. Updates have been made to explain how repayments are allocated to a customer's student loans, and how those repayments can trigger the Welsh partial cancellation policy.

  3. Bulletpoint updated to include 'made a voluntary repayment'

  4. Content has been updated to include more in-depth guidance about the Welsh Partial Cancellation Policy.

  5. Added translation