SoFi Blog

Last Wednesday, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) released a report summarizing complaints from 3,800 student loan borrowers. SoFi was not named in these borrower complaints, but as a private lender focused on refinancing existing student loans, we hear a lot about the challenges our customers have faced with their previous lenders.

There are a lot of factors to take into account when choosing a student loan – differing interest rates, private vs. public, the pros and cons of working with various lenders.  Among those choices, we at SoFi have found one of the things that trips up borrowers the most is the choice between fixed rate and variable rate (also known as floating rate) loans.

Recently, there’s been a lot of talk amongst leaders in Washington about how to improve the painful process of repaying student loans. At SoFi, we feel your pain and work hard to offer more flexible, more affordable options for our borrowers. One idea that’s getting a lot of attention is increasing the options for refinancing debt after graduation. The only lender currently focused on refinancing student loans (both private and federal) is SoFi.

SoFi continues to make waves in the media this week on public radio and in print. We were thrilled to see top business radio program Marketplace bring much needed attention to important education issues. In this recent story, Amy Scott reports on the challenge of refinancing Federal student loans. While one youth advocacy group is encouraging the government to take action on this issue, SoFi already helps graduates refinance their private and Federal educational debt!

Student loans aren’t fun, and they can be confusing. What frustrates us at SoFi is the dogma in the market that students should always exhaust their federal loan options before considering private loans. This can be very bad advice. While we agree that subsidized Direct and Perkins loans are clear no-brainers for students if you are eligible for them, things get more ambiguous with unsubsidized Direct loans and become down right murky with the egregiously burdensome Grad PLUS loan.