A new private student loan is aimed at parents who want to
limit the debt their offspring take on. Citizens
Financial Group this month launched a loan for parents on which the
interest rate can be lower than that of the federal loan used by many parents
to pay for college. And unlike the federal loan, the new loan doesn’t charge an
origination fee, thereby allowing parents to save hundreds or more dollars
upfront. Applicants must have good credit, generally a FICO score
above 700, to get approved. (FICO scores range from 300 to 850.) Borrowers will
have to show that they have the income to pay back the loan and that their
monthly debt payments aren’t high compared with their income.
With the new Citizens loan, unlike most bank loans, everyone
who gets approved will be offered the same rates. The basic rate on the loan
with a 10-year repayment is 7.2% and it can decline to 6.7% if borrowers arrange
for their loan to be paid automatically each month and if they open a Citizens
bank account. Borrowers who opt for a five-year repayment period are looking at
rates of 7.1% and 6.6%, respectively.
This is the latest attempt by Citizens—which up until a
couple of years ago was a small player in the private student-loan industry—to
expand its presence in the market. The Providence, R.I.-based bank began
refinancing private student loans early last year and began replacing federal
student loans with private ones in September—both transactions that offer
borrowers the opportunity to lower their interest rate. The latest
rollout marks another attempt by the bank to compete against the federal
government.
The new loan is also aimed at parents who don’t want their
children to sign up for college debt. This marks a departure from the
traditional private student-loan agreement in which the student is the primary
borrower. Private lenders in most cases require student-loan applicants to have
a creditworthy parent or other adult to cosign the loan in order to get
approved—which leaves both borrowers on the hook for the loan. Missing payments
will impact both borrowers’ credit reports and scores, making them less likely
to get approved or more likely to get charged high interest rates on other
loans they apply for.
Just over 94% of the undergraduate private student-loan
dollars given out for the 2014-15 year had a cosigner, according to MeasureOne,
a San Francisco-based firm that tracks student loans. At Citizens, parents
taking out the new loan could face a higher interest rate than on the bank’s
traditional student loans, on which the lowest interest rate is currently
5.75%.
The new Citizens loan eliminating the student from the
equation joins a similar offering from Wells Fargo,
the second largest private student-loan lender by volume. Wells Fargo’s
lowest fixed rate on this loan is 6.24%, taking into account a discount of a
quarter of a percentage point when borrowers set up autopay, another discount
of the same size for borrowers who have certain other Wells Fargo accounts, and
another quarter-point promotional discount that runs through June.
Click
here to access the full article on The Wall Street Journal.