Mike Cagney, SoFi CEO, commented:
"We're thankful to our members for making SoFi the leader in student loan refinancing and for helping pave our way in new products such as mortgages and personal loans. We're excited to give back to the SoFi community through this loan payoff program and get the word out to the millions of student loan borrowers who deserve a better loan than the one they have today."
To celebrate this lending milestone SoFi has launched #2BillionTogether to pay off one member’s SoFi refinanced student loan this quarter, with similar events happening in upcoming quarters.
In order to participate in #2BillionTogether, SoFi members who have refinanced their student loans are asked to share how refinancing with SoFi has impacted their life and how a student loan payoff would impact their plans moving forward.
SoFi was the first marketplace lender to refinance both Federal and private student loans, and now is the largest provider of student loan refinancing. But it is now starting to diversify the offerings on the platform and is aiming to cater to early stage career professionals and provide solutions to all their financing needs. Earlier this year the platform extended its product offering by launching personal loans. This allows consumers to borrow between $10,000 and $100,000 with fixed interest rates starting at 5.5% APR. In March the company launched its mobile mortgage experience, which allows homebuyers and those looking to refinance their mortgages to secure personalized loan rates and get prequalified via their smartphone, tablet or online.
There have been repeated whispers that SoFi will follow Lending Club and OnDeck and IPO this year. It was reported in March that SoFi plans to file an S-1 in Q2, and go public in the second half of 2015. However, this is of course subject to change depending on market conditions. In February the platform raised $200m in a Series D financing round, which valued the company at $1.3 billion. For comparison Prosper has just completed a $165m Series D round which valued the platform at $1.9 billion. We will be watching closely to see how the growth of both of these platforms develops over the coming year.
