Survey: Borrowers Have a Love-Hate Relationship With Student Loan Refinancing Companies;

You’ve seen the student loan refinancing ads. Heard about the companies. Reviewed the offers. Now you’re curious about getting started, but refinancing your loan is tough when you have to compare student loan refinancing companies.

Which option is the best? It’s important to find a lender that makes you feel confident about moving forward. After all, you’re giving up precious federal student loan protections to work with this new company, so your relationship should feel worthwhile.

But our recent student loan refinancing survey shed light on what borrowers understand about the refinancing process and how they really feel about their refinancing companies. We compared our survey responses to see which student loan refinancing company our respondents liked the most. Read on to learn more about the results of our survey.

Borrowers are in the dark about student loan refinancing

One of the most interesting survey findings was that many respondents were unaware of any student loan refinancing companies before discovering Student Loan Planner. In fact, 28 percent of respondents couldn’t name any student loan refinance companies, while about 14 percent knew of one student loan refinancing company and 26 percent knew of two refinancing companies.

On top of borrowers’ lack of awareness, we found 85 percent of borrowers had some sort of fear around refinancing. Some concerns were about the refinancing process, while others reported worry that companies were potentially running student loan refinancing scams. Another expressed a lack of understanding, stating they weren’t really sure what refinancing is or what it does.

The respondents who did refinance their student loans, however, definitely had opinions about their student loan refinancing company.

Compare student loan refinancing companies

In our survey, we asked respondents a few questions, two of which were:

• “Which refinancing company do you admire or like the most?”
• “Which refinancing company do you like the least?”

The options included CommonBond, Earnest, LendKey, Laurel Road, SoFi, Elfi, First Republic Bank, Credible, Splash, Brazos, and “other.” We’ve reviewed the data and have the top student loan refinancing companies, rated by our respondents.

SoFi ranks as both “most” and “least” liked refinancing company

When asked which student loan refinancing company borrowers admire or like the most, the overwhelming response was SoFi at 34 percent. In second place was “other” at 26 percent in which most borrowers had stated they had no thoughts or didn’t like any of them (ouch).

What’s interesting is when we asked, “What student loan refinance company do you like the least?”, SoFi also came out on top (14 percent). A good portion of borrowers (45 percent) said “other” and listed they had no opinion or it was not applicable, but out of the student loan refinancing companies listed, SoFi won out as both the most admired and least admired.

SoFi: more than just student loan refinancing

It’s easy to see why SoFi is popular. SoFi offers much more than student loan refinancing. It also hosts happy hours and exclusive events for their borrowers that can be an added perk to being a member. As a member, you can also take advantage of various financial products, such as mortgages and personal loans.

It positions its company as a one-stop shop for financial products for millennials, many of whom are naturally distrustful of traditional banks (and hey, happy hour and free food doesn’t hurt either).

So why was SoFi also ranked the least favorite among borrowers? One possibility is a scathing 2017 New York Times review detailing scandals within the company. Of course, the more popular a company is, the more scrutiny there is, too. From our respondents perspective, they have a love-hate relationship with SoFi.