For prospective university students, applying for student finance can often be a long and arduous process filled with long searches for documents and all the other information needed to secure funding for a Higher Education course. But HM Revenue and Customs are telling next year's undergrads they can speed this up 'quickly and easily' by downloading their app.
HMRC received 112,000 calls to their helpline last year from people trying to find their NI number, almost half of which were from people aged 16 to 20. 6400 of these were in May alone, which is also typically the busiest month for student finance applications.Suzanne Newton, HMRC’s Director General for Change Delivery, said: "Getting your NI number is simple with a tap of HMRC’s app and young people should take advantage of it.
This change could also prove useful when applying for help with living expenses, as how much a student receives is based on their household income, as well as they they will live when studying. Parents or the partners of mature students will also need to have their NI number to hand in order to process the application.