Guiding these borrowers takes time and training. Navient, the lawsuits say, steered clients toward options that were simpler for the company.

Anna Nepomuceno, 40, who lives in Tacoma, Wash., has been trying for years to get help from Navient. Around a decade ago, her partner, Andrew Brittell, 46, took out multiple loans totaling tens of thousands of dollars to attend DeVry, a for-profit school. Mr. Brittell now works in the billing department of a telecommunications company and takes home around $3,000 a month after taxes, barely covering the basic living expenses for their family of five.

Mr. Brittell’s federal loans would probably qualify him for an income-based repayment plan, and he has repeatedly applied to Navient to participate in such a program. The company has repeatedly lost his paperwork, Ms. Nepomuceno said — and each time, Navient suggested that Mr. Brittell instead apply for yet another loan forbearance, a program that suspends payments while interest continues to accrue.

Several of Mr. Brittell’s loans have been in forbearance for more than five years, Ms. Nepomuceno said. He has made no payments on them, and the balance due has ballooned to more than $90,000.

Mr. Brittel “will put in the paperwork, and then they’ll tell us that it never went through, or that they lost it, and we should go on forbearance,” she said, adding: “This has happened over and over again. It’s like a vicious cycle.”

Navient declined to comment on individual customers’ cases. But Mr. Brittell’s story is not unique, according to the suits filed this week, including one by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a government agency created under the 2010 financial reform laws that increased regulation of the financial industry.