Washington — One of the nation’s largest state-owned providers of private student loans, the Massachusetts Educational Financing Authority, is back in business.

The agency, also known as MEFA, announced in July that it lacked the funds needed to operate, leaving more than 40,000 Massachusetts students and their families hurrying to find other options. MEFA announced today, however, that it had now raised $400-million in financing through the sale of bonds, enough to let it resume lending immediately.

MEFA’s predicament led to some controversy last month, when the Democratic governor of Massachusetts, Deval L. Patrick, suggested options that included having colleges help the financing authority by investing millions of dollars in it. Some loan experts suggested that such an approach would violate ethical guidelines, recently adopted nationwide, that had been designed to create greater financial distance between colleges and the loan companies they recommend to their students.

Rather than pursue the governor’s suggestions, loan-agency officials said they devoted their attention to convincing investors, in the face of widespread economic turmoil, that MEFA’s student-loan portfolio represented a relatively safe and strong investment.

“It just really took time to attract investors and then sell them on that,” said MEFA’s executive director, Thomas M. Graf.

The $400-million should be enough money to allow MEFA to fulfill lending requests through this fall, especially since many students already made alternative loan arrangements after MEFA’s withdrawal from the market in late July, Mr. Graf said. —Paul Basken