CommonBond is another notable upstart hoping to fix the $1.3 trillion student debt crisis in the U.S. The company more than doubled its headcount in 2015, raised $35 million in a September funding round, and expanded to serve graduates of more than 2,000 schools.
CommonBond has refinanced more than $100 million worth of student loans, and projects doing more than $1 billion by the end of 2016. It evaluates potential clients using factors beyond the FICO score: employment history and savings accounts, for example. (The average FICO score for a CommonBond client is 770.)