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At the start of the 2024/2025 academic year, the Student Loans Company (SLC) is reminding students to be vigilant of smishing scams.

Scammers target students at this time of year as they receive their first maintenance loan payment.

SLC is expecting to pay £2 billion to students over the autumn term, and last year it stopped £2.

9 million of maintenance loan payments from being taken by smishing and phishing scams, where students received and acted on false communications.

Smishing, which is fraud involving text messages, is currently the most popular form of scam.

Students are usually asked to click a link to complete a task, such as verifying bank details or confirming their personal information, providing an opportunity for a payment to be diverted to a scammer’s bank account.

SLC will never ask students to provide or verify their personal or financial information via email or text message.

Alan Balanowski, Risk Director at SLC, is urging students to pay attention to any communication they receive from Student Finance England (SFE) or SLC over the coming weeks.

He said: “Starting or returning to university is an exciting time, but it’s also busy, with students getting organised and set up for the academic year, which includes dealing with information from different organisations, including ourselves.

We aim to ensure our payment process is simple for students, but we do experience a rise in smishing scams at this time of year.

This means students need to be alert to any potential attempt to intercept their maintenance loan instalment.

“We have a range of preventive methods we use to target scams, but the most impactful tool we have is working together with students to stop scammers.

If a student receives a suspicious message, they should delete it and report it immediately.

If a scammer does succeed in obtaining personal details, then we must collectively act quickly to spot and block the action.

“Last year, we were able to stop £2.

9 million of maintenance loan payments ending up in the hands of scammers, and we are focused on working as effectively as we can to protect students and their finances.

If a student receives a suspicious message, they should report it immediately by email and to SLC by calling our dedicated hotline on 0300 100 0059.

There is also a range of additional advice and information on recognising and avoiding scams from the UK’s national reporting centre for fraud and cybercrime.

Don’t include personal or financial information like your National Insurance number or credit card details.

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