This article may have been created or edited in return for undisclosed payments, a violation of Wikipedia's terms of use. It may require cleanup to comply with Wikipedia's content policies, particularly neutral point of view. (March 2018) |
Company type | Private |
---|---|
Industry | Financial Services |
Founded | November 2011 |
Headquarters | New York, New York |
Products | Student loans |
Website | commonbond |
CommonBond is a marketplace lender that refinances graduate and undergraduate student loans for university graduates. [1] CommonBond also provides in-school loans to MBA students at 20 programs in the United States. The company launched nationally in September 2013. [2]
CommonBond was founded in November 2012 by David Klein, Michael Taormina, and Jessup Shean, who met at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School MBA program. [3] The impetus was the founders' frustration with the lack of affordable loan options to fund their own graduate school education. [3] For their business proposal, the trio was accepted to the Wharton Venture Initiation Program, which serves as a start-up incubator. [4] After deciding to pilot their model at Wharton, the group focused on fundraising during 2012. By the company's launch in November 2012, $2.5 million had been invested by Wharton alumni and $1 million of seed funding was provided by a Wharton alumnus in return for a stake in the company. [3] CommonBond's first fund lent to 40 MBA students and recent graduates at Wharton.[ citation needed ]
CommonBond expanded to 20 MBA programs across the United States in September 2013, after announcing it had raised over $100 million in equity and debt financing. [5] [6] [7] In March 2014, CommonBond expanded its student loan refinancing and consolidation programs to graduates of law, medical, and engineering programs across the US. [8] [9]
In February 2015, CommonBond expanded its student loan refinancing program to 14 graduate degree programs. [10] At that time, the company also announced a financing partnership with Nelnet (NYSE: NNI). Nelnet committed $150 million to fund CommonBond loan volume and made an equity investment in the company. [11]
In September 2015, CommonBond raised $35 million in Series B funding from August Capital, Nyca Partners, and Victory Park Capital, in a round led by August Capital. [12] Shortly thereafter, the company announced the expansion of its student loan refinancing program to graduates of over 2,000 universities, as well as the introduction of its Parent PLUS Loan refinancing program. [1]
In September 2015, CommonBond introduced a new Parent PLUS loan refinancing program, whereby parents who borrowed federal Parent PLUS loans to finance their children’s undergraduate education can refinance those loans through CommonBond. [1]
CommonBond announced a partnership with Prodigy Finance, an international post-graduate student lender, in July 2015. The partnership allows international post-graduate students to secure funding for their business school education in the US through Prodigy Finance, which determines the terms and conditions of the student loans. [13]
The Wharton School is the business school of the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn), a private Ivy League research university in Philadelphia. Established in 1881 through a donation from Joseph Wharton, a co-founder of Bethlehem Steel, the Wharton School is the world's oldest collegiate business school.
SLM Corporation is a publicly traded U.S. corporation that provides consumer banking. Its nature has changed dramatically since it was set up in the early 1970s; initially a government entity that serviced federal education loans, it then became private and began offering private student loans.
A student loan is a type of loan designed to help students pay for post-secondary education and the associated fees, such as tuition, books and supplies, and living expenses. It may differ from other types of loans in the fact that the interest rate may be substantially lower and the repayment schedule may be deferred while the student is still in school. It also differs in many countries in the strict laws regulating renegotiating and bankruptcy. This article highlights the differences of the student loan system in several major countries.
Refinancing is the replacement of an existing debt obligation with another debt obligation under a different term and interest rate. The terms and conditions of refinancing may vary widely by country, province, or state, based on several economic factors such as inherent risk, projected risk, political stability of a nation, currency stability, banking regulations, borrower's credit worthiness, and credit rating of a nation. In many industrialized nations, common forms of refinancing include primary residence mortgages and car loans.
Ditech Financial LLC was a provider of home loan, loan servicing and refinance products to consumers and institutional partners in the U.S.
A balloon payment mortgage is a mortgage that does not fully amortize over the term of the note, thus leaving a balance due at maturity. The final payment is called a balloon payment because of its large size. Balloon payment mortgages are more common in commercial real estate than in residential real estate today due to the prevalence of mortgages with longer periods of amortization, in particular, the 30-year fixed-rate mortgages. A balloon payment mortgage may have a fixed or a floating interest rate. The most common way of describing a balloon loan uses the terminology X due in Y, where X is the number of years over which the loan is amortized, and Y is the year in which the principal balance is due.
MyRichUncle was a loan product that was marketed to students by the American company MRU Holdings, Inc.. Incorporated March 2, 2000 in Delaware, MyRichUncle entered the student lending market as an originator and holder of private student loans. By 2007, the company was listed on the Naqdaq composite and expanded into holding Federal Family Education Loan Program (FFELP) loans.
A private student loan is a financing option for higher education in the United States that can supplement, but should not replace, federal loans, such as Stafford loans, Perkins loans and PLUS loans. Private loans, which are heavily advertised, do not have the forbearance and deferral options available with federal loans. In contrast with federal subsidized loans, interest accrues while the student is in college, even if repayment does not begin until after graduation. While unsubsidized federal loans do have interest charges while the student is studying, private student loan rates are usually higher, sometimes much higher. Fees vary greatly, and legal cases have reported collection charges reaching 50% of amount of the loan. Since 2011, most private student loans are offered with zero fees, effectively rolling the fees into the interest rates.
Refinancing risk, in banking and finance, is the possibility that a borrower cannot refinance by borrowing to repay existing debt. Many types of commercial lending incorporate balloon payments at the point of final maturity. The intention or assumption is often that the borrower will take out a new loan to pay the existing lenders.
In the United States, student loans are a form of financial aid intended to help students access higher education. In 2018, 70 percent of higher education graduates had used loans to cover some or all of their expenses. With notable exceptions, student loans must be repaid, in contrast to other forms of financial aid such as scholarships, which are not repaid, and grants, which rarely have to be repaid. Student loans may be discharged through bankruptcy, but this is difficult. Research shows that access to student loans increases credit-constrained students' degree completion, later-life earnings, and student loan repayment while having no impact on overall debt.
Nelnet, Inc., is a United States–based conglomerate that primary focused on financial services including student and consumer loan origination and servicing. Additionally, the company operates an investing arm, an internet bank and owns Allo Fiber, a cable and internet provider. The company is headquartered in Lincoln, Nebraska.
Vikram Shankar Pandit is an Indian-American banker and investor who was the chief executive officer of Citigroup from December 2007 to 16 October 2012 and is the current chairman and chief executive officer of The Orogen Group.
The Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP) is a federal program of the United States, set up by the Federal Housing Finance Agency in March 2009, to help underwater and near-underwater homeowners refinance their mortgages. Unlike the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP), which assists homeowners who are in danger of foreclosure, this program benefits homeowners whose mortgage payments are current, but who cannot refinance due to dropping home prices in the wake of the U.S. housing market correction.
SoFi Technologies, Inc. is an American personal finance and financial technology company. Founded in 2011 at Stanford University, it operates as a direct bank and supports other financial institutions through its technology platform. As of 2024, SoFi serves 8.8 million customers and 158 million platform accounts.
Earnest is a technology-enabled fintech lender headquartered in San Francisco, California that offers tertiary education financing products, including student loan refinancing and private student loans. The company evaluates a person’s full education, employment, and financial profile, in addition to their credit score in order to obtain a complete financial profile of each applicant. This type of credit is referred to as "merit-based lending."
Leonard M. Tannenbaum is the founder and chief executive officer of AFC Gamma Inc., a commercial mortgage REIT which trades on the NASDAQ exchange under the ticker AFCG. Previously, he was the founder and chief executive officer of Fifth Street Asset Management, which was sold to Oaktree Asset Management in 2017. He also founded the pro-business political action committee "Keeping America Competitive".
Prodigy Finance is a fintech platform that enables financing for international postgraduate students who attend a participating business school or postgraduate institution.
LendEDU is an online marketplace for a variety of financial products, including student loans, personal loans, and credit cards. It has been compared to Lendingtree.com, but for student lending. In 2018, LendEDU encountered controversy when it was revealed to be the undisclosed owner of "Student Loan Report", and its CEO was accused of "deceiving news organizations with a fake source".
Mpower Financing is a public-benefit corporation. It is based in Washington, DC, with an office in Bangalore, India. It was founded by Manu Smadja and Michael Davis in 2014, both of whom attended INSEAD in Paris where they met.
Michael 'Mike' Cagney is an American entrepreneur. He is the co-founder and CEO of financial services company Figure Technologies, a member of the founding team of Provenance Blockchain and the co-founder and former CEO of SoFi. Cagney is also co-founder and was the managing member of hedge fund Cabezon Investment Group.