Next stage for CommonBond: $300M+ in new funding, an acquisition of a great company, and a game-changing “401 (k) platform for student loans”

I am thrilled to announce some big news at CommonBond: we just raised over $300 million in new funding, acquired a student loan management platform, Gradible, and are launching an employer-based student loan repayment platform that allows employers to contribute towards paying down their employees’ student debt.

The implications of today’s announcement are many, and the one I’m most excited about is this: CommonBond is now able to help improve the lives of all 40 million Americans with student debt — regardless of income, education, or credit profile — a first for a student lender in this country.

$300M+ in new funding

Today’s announcement includes a $30 million equity round led by Neuberger Berman Private Equity, a highly regarded global investment firm with over $200 billion in assets under management. They will be joining our Board of Directors as well.

Neuberger Berman will join CommonBond’s set of existing investors which includes August Capital, Tribeca Venture Partners, Social Capital, Nyca Partners and Victory Park Capital — as well as individual investors Vikram Pandit former CEO of Citigroup, Tom Glocer former CEO of Thomson Reuters, and Tom Kalaris former CEO of Barclays Wealth Management.

We’ll be using the new equity funding to hire new talent, grow our lending capital base, and build out our technology to simplify the management of student debt.

We’re also announcing $300 million in new funding in the form of loan purchases from a leading global asset management firm. We’ll use this capital to directly fund loans that we originate on the CommonBond platform. This capital will meet the growing demand for CommonBond’s core student loan refinance product, which allows borrowers to easily consolidate their student loans, lower their interest rates, and save about $15,000 on average over the life of their loans.

With the new funding, CommonBond has raised over $1 billion to date across equity and debt.

Acquisition of Gradible

We know that student loan refinancing isn’t for everyone, and so we wanted to find ways to help anyone with student debt. Enter Gradible, a student loan management platform that provides people with unbiased, personalized recommendations on the best way to pay back their student loans.

Through the acquisition, CommonBond now enables people with student debt to better understand what repayment options are right for them, whether that’s refinancing or whether that’s taking advantage of a federal government student loan program like Income-Based Repayment (IBR) or Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF).

CommonBond is now the first student lender in the country to meaningfully serve all 40 million Americans with student debt. Whether someone has a CommonBond loan or not, they’ll now be able to find the best repayment option for their specific financial situation.

“401(k) platform for student loans”

Marrying Gradible and CommonBond technology, we now enable employers to contribute directly to their employees’ monthly student loan payment, just as employers do now for their employees’ retirement accounts. We’re calling it the “401(k) platform for student loans,” and we’ve already signed up some of the country’s largest firms (if you’re interested in bringing this to your company, too, email us at partners@commonbond.co).

A growing number of people are requesting student loan repayment benefits in the workplace, and in many cases, they are choosing their employers based on these benefits. Employers are starting to differentiate themselves through these student loan benefits, and we are proud to be the first company in America to provide employers with the three most critical benefits in one tool: student loan assessment (built on the Gradible platform), refinancing (our core lending product), and contribution programs (the “401(k) for student loans”).

We’re on a mission

CommonBond has had a stretch of phenomenal growth over the past year, including surpassing $500 million in loans funded, increasing revenues and volumes, completing investment-grade securitizations, signing nearly 100 corporate partnerships, and funding the education of thousands of students in need through our Social Promise (the first “1-for-1” social mission in finance).

None of this would be possible without our phenomenal team. I’ve always said that our people and our company culture will be the reason we succeed long term, and I couldn’t be more proud of this group. They are dedicated to our mission, committed to our customer, and really bring meaning to our work.

Their hard work and dedication are the reasons we are able to make announcements like today’s and why Inc. Magazine named CommonBond one of the Top 50 Best Workplaces in America last month.

All of our milestones to date, and our announcement today, tie back to the heart of why we started CommonBond in the first place: to have the broadest impact possible on improving the financial health of consumers — beginning with student debt.

You’ll be hearing more announcements from us in the year ahead, in the name of bettering the financial health of millions. And we’ll continue to do it with a focus on simplicity, through transparency and technology.