SoFi Loans Review

SoFi loans money for nearly any purpose, but it’s not a bank. Learn more about SoFi personal loans, student loans, and more.

SoFi wants to give big banks a run for their money (and those banks have lots of money).

But what is SoFi? And why should you care?

You may have read about how SoFi is offering student-loan refinancing or how SoFi can give young professionals with promising careers mortgages when traditional banks say no.

SoFi Personal Loans

SoFi stands proud of its status as a non-bank lender, offering highly competitive personal loans starting at 8.99% APR (with autopay discount). The rate SoFi offers may not be the lowest, but unique and friendly perks, like unemployment protection, make Sofi worth a look.

Pros:

• No prepayment penalties
• Borrow up to $100,000
• Simple online application
• Unemployment protection

Cons:

• High minimum loan amount

Learn More

At the moment, SoFi loans money for a variety of uses. SoFi currently offers:

• Student-loan refinancing
• Unsecured personal loans between $5,000 and $100,000
• Parent loans (for students)
• Student loans for some graduate programs
• Mortgages (does not originate mortgage loans in Hawaii).

But SoFi is not a bank. SoFi loans are funded by investors, not deposits.

To a customer who gets a loan from SoFi, this distinction may seem unimportant. But not being a bank can actually allow SoFi to offer more competitive products and—possibly—be more customer friendly.

I think the credit application process has been unfair to applicants for decades because lenders have more information about applicants (and their credit) than the applicants themselves do, and lenders can leverage this differential to charge higher rates (or, in egregious cases, discriminate against certain people).

Furthermore, applicants can be punished for shopping around for credit because too many credit inquires can damage their credit scores.

The rise of products like Credit Sesame and SoFi’s Financial Insights Tools has helped a bit by enabling consumers to monitor their own credit scores for free. Lenders could do even better by being upfront about the requirements for a loan before you apply.

SoFi does that. You can check your eligibility for free in about two minutes on their site—a process which will not affect your credit score. They also offer some fairly clear minimum criteria for each of their products.

Like all lenders, SoFi sets its interest rates based upon each individual applicant’s creditworthiness. For applicants with stellar credit, however, I haven’t seen interest rates that beat SoFi’s anywhere.

SoFi started in 2011 and has more than 4 million SoFi members and over $73B in funded loans. But like I said before, SoFi wants to give big banks a run for their money, and, thus far, SoFi has barely made a ripple in the banking industry’s sea of cash.

We don’t know what all of SoFi’s future plans hold, but they do have some projects in the works. For example, SoFi has worked on automated investing.

See how SoFi’s personal loans compare to other top personal loans in our list of best personal loans page and on student loan refinancing in our best companies for student loan refinancing article.