Most credit unions don’t advertise student loan refinancing, and you’d have to join one before you could even ask. LendKey gets around that. It’s an online platform where credit unions and community banks lend, so you can get their quotes from one form.
Here’s how the process actually goes, and what to check before you hand over your loans to a lender you’ve never heard of.
The process, start to finish
- Get a quote. You fill out a short form on LendKey’s site. It takes about two minutes and doesn’t affect your credit score.
- See your offers. The offers come from credit unions and community banks in LendKey’s network. Each one is a different lender with its own rate and fine print.
- Pick one and apply. You apply with that lender for a term between 5 and 20 years, fixed or variable.
- Your old loans get paid off. The new loan pays off the loans you refinanced. From then on, you owe the credit union or bank that made it, with one monthly payment.
Who can do this? You need a bachelor’s degree, a credit score of at least 650, U.S. citizenship or permanent residency, and more than $5,000 to refinance. The details, including the state exceptions, are in our full LendKey review.
Why go through a credit union at all?
Mostly for the choice. A bank you already use might not refinance student loans, and a big online lender gives you exactly one offer. A marketplace like LendKey puts several smaller lenders in front of you at once.
There’s no guarantee a credit union beats a big lender on rate, though. That’s why you compare. LendKey’s lenders charge no origination fee, no application fee and no prepayment penalty, so getting quotes costs you nothing but a few minutes.
Questions to ask the lender before you sign
LendKey’s refinance page doesn’t list the lenders in its network, so you won’t know who you’re borrowing from until you see your offers. Once you do, get answers to these:
- Do you have to become a member of the credit union to take the loan?
- Does the full application trigger a hard credit pull?
- What happens if you lose your job? Can you pause payments, and does interest keep building while you do?
- If you’re using a cosigner, can they be released later, and after how many payments?
A good lender answers all four without a fuss. If you can’t get a straight answer, take the next offer.
Before you refinance federal loans
There’s no federal way to refinance. Once a credit union pays off a federal loan, the debt is a private loan from then on, and Federal Student Aid is clear that the federal benefits go with it.
That means no income-driven repayment, no Public Service Loan Forgiveness or other federal forgiveness, and no federal deferment or forbearance. If you just want one payment and keep your federal loans federal, look at federal consolidation instead.
Check which loans you have first. Log in to studentaid.gov and open My Aid on your dashboard: what’s listed there is federal. Private loans are the ones worth refinancing.
Next stepGot a quote? Run it through our refinance calculator and compare it with what you pay now. More lenders are compared on our student loan refinancing guide.
Want more than LendKey’s network in the mix? A second marketplace adds a few more quotes for the same soft pull.
Compare refinance offers with Splash Financial
- See offers from Splash’s lending partners with a soft credit pull. Continuing to apply leads to a hard pull.
- No application fees, no origination fees and no prepayment penalties.
- Fixed terms of 5 to 20 years and variable terms of 5 to 25 years. Minimum $5,000.
- Best fit: private loans, a four-year degree, and credit of 700 or higher.
Splash Financial is a marketplace, not the lender. Your loan comes from one of its lending partners, and some are credit unions you’d need to join. Not all rates and amounts are available in every state. If you refinance federal loans through Splash, you lose federal benefits for good.
No. LendKey is a platform. The loan comes from a credit union or community bank in its network, and you repay that lender.
No. The rate quote takes about two minutes and does not affect your credit score. Ask the lender whether the full application causes a hard pull before you submit it.
LendKey does not say on its refinance page. Ask the credit union that makes your offer before you sign, since some credit unions require membership.
You can include federal loans, but refinancing them with a private lender permanently ends federal benefits like income-driven repayment, PSLF and federal forbearance. Refinancing only your private loans keeps your federal loans and their protections where they are.
Sources (4)
We use primary sources wherever we can: Federal Student Aid, the U.S. Department of Education, the IRS, federal regulations and each company’s own site.
- LendKey. Student Loan Refinancing. lendkey.com. Accessed October 22, 2026.
- LendKey. Home page. lendkey.com. Accessed October 22, 2026.
- Federal Student Aid. Financial Aid Dictionary: refinance. studentaid.gov. Accessed October 22, 2026.
- Federal Student Aid. Who’s My Student Loan Servicer?. studentaid.gov. Accessed October 22, 2026.
