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Student loan refinancing can mean big savings in the right circumstances. Here’s how it works: A new private company—typically a bank, credit union or online lender—pays off the student loans you choose to refinance, and you’ll get a new loan with an interest rate tied to your credit history, income and other characteristics.
You should consider student loan refinancing if you have a good or excellent credit score and stable income (or a co-signer who does) and your current loans have high enough interest rates that you’ll benefit from a lower rate. In some cases, you can even refinance federal PLUS loans your parents took out to help you pay for college, relieving them of payment responsibility.
There’s a big caveat when you refinance federal student loans. Since your new lender will be a private entity, you’ll lose federal repayment protections. Right now, that means missing out on COVID-19-specific relief for federal student loan borrowers, including a pause on monthly payments and 0% interest rates through the end of 2020. If you have private loans, however, you can refinance those separately from federal loans; you won’t lose important benefits because private loans do not come with similarly generous protections.
Below we’ve identified the best student loan refinance lenders for those who qualify, based on features including interest rates, availability to borrowers and hardship repayment options. None of the lenders on our list charge origination or prepayment fees, though some charge late fees. In some cases, they offer a separate refinancing product for parent loan borrowers; we scored each based on their student loan refinancing option only.
When comparing interest rates, know the low end of the ranges are only accessible to those with the highest credit scores. Also, all rates listed below include a standard 0.25% interest rate discount for using automatic payments.
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Tips for Comparing Student Loan Refinance Lenders
Since the goal of refinancing is to save money on interest, you’ll likely want to choose the lender that offers you the lowest rate you qualify for. Variable rates tend to be lower than fixed rates, but they could go up in the future; only opt for a variable rate if you plan to pay off your loan quickly.
Similar to private student loans for those attending school, refinance loans aren’t required to offer the same consumer protections that federal loans do, such as income-driven repayment plans or forgiveness. But some refinance lenders provide more than the standard 12 months of forbearance throughout the loan term, and/or additional loan modification options for borrowers having difficulty making payments.
Refinancing is typically best for those with strong incomes and job stability. But life is unpredictable. If you think you might need to take a pause from payments or to lower your monthly bill, consider choosing a lender with a more generous forbearance policy.
Also, if you choose to refinance with the help of a co-signer, go with a lender that offers a co-signer release policy so you can take on the full repayment obligation when possible. That will protect your co-signer’s credit from the negative marks that could occur if you fall behind on payments.
Methodology
We requested data from 16 lenders that dominate the student loan refinance market and scored them across 15 data points in the categories of interest rates, fees, loan terms, hardship options, application process and eligibility. We chose the 10 best to display based on those earning three stars or higher.
The following is the weighting assigned to each category:
- Hardship options: 30%
- Eligibility: 18%
- Loan terms: 18%
- Application process: 16%
- Interest rates: 13%
- Fees: 5%
Specific characteristics taken into consideration within each category included number of months of forbearance available, hardship repayment options beyond traditional forbearance, availability of in-school deferment, accessibility to borrowers without a bachelor’s degree, time to default, disclosure of credit score and income requirements and other factors.
Lenders who offered interest rates below 7% scored the highest, as did those who offered more than the standard 12 months of forbearance, who offered interest rate discounts beyond the standard 0.25% for automatic payments, who charged no late fees and who offered multiple loan terms maxing out at 15 years. We believe that to take full advantage of refinancing, borrowers should choose the shortest loan term available, and a 20-year term has the potential to limit interest savings.
In some cases, lenders were awarded partial points, and a maximum of 3% of the final score was left to editorial discretion based on the quality of consumer-friendly features offered.
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