I officially completed the first of my 2020 resolution, I refinanced my student loans! I know when I was considering first Republic Bank, I kept searching for information on how to refinance student loan with First Republic so I figured I’d recap my journey of the refinancing process.

Looking back, this has been a 2.5-year goal in the making. I first mentioned my desire to refinance with First Republic way back in October of 2017 aka since my second debt statement post and my fourth ever post in general ever on this blog.

It went on to become my 2018 goal. Clearly, didn’t happen in 2018… also didn’t happen in 2019… Somehow it didn’t even make it into my 2019 goal. But dreams do come true (however lame this dream is!) because it finally happened!

And now I want to recap my experience to give insider info to those who are interested or in the process of applying since I had to scour through multiple reddit posts to even gain a few tidbits of information. 

*As a disclaimer: I am in no manner sponsored by First Republic to make this post, nor am I offering a referral bonus to anyone who signs up with First Republic (to keep myself anonymous), although there are referral bonuses ($300 for both the referrer and referee).

Initial Search: 2018

I first heard about First Republic Bank from a friend who wasn’t interested in refinancing her federal loans since she was working in non-profit and pursuing PLSF. Her friend had mentioned First Republic for its crazy low interest rate and so she passed on the information to me since she thought I’d be interested.

January 2018 (yep, over two years ago) was the first time I accessed the First Republic calculator to get a quote which prompted me to put in my email information. Before I knew it, I was right away contacted by a local representative to answer any questions I may have.

Looking back on my email history from 2018, I was inquiring on refinancing $110,000 of my student loans. But I ended up halting the process because the tragedy of getting laid off happened to me in February of 2018.

As I documented in my Private vs Federal Loan post, being laid off led me to stay with my federal loans and enter the REPAYE program. It turned out to be a blessing in disguise as I was able to score a $0 minimum payment for a year and get 100% interest subsidy on my subsidized loan and a 50% subsidy on my unsubsidized loan with REPAYE.

As you can see in my debt progress page, there was a gap of about 3 months between February and April when I completely stopped making payments while I was in-between jobs. I was thankful I had delayed the process of refinancing and was able to get by with no student loan payments during that time period which would not have been possible with a private loan.

My lay-off truly scarred me. While I think I am a stronger person because of it, that experience truly made me realize how fleeting my salary could be and how I couldn’t fully rely on it. If it happened once, it could happen again.

Since then, I put refinancing at the back of my mind. I wasn’t ready to refinance my 6-figure loan with $2k monthly payments anytime soon, even with the temptation of a crazy low interest rate.

Second Time is a Charm: 2019

Fast forward to almost 2 years later, October 2019, I had just hit positive net worth and realized I was finally within an arm’s reach of getting into the $50k’s mark in my student loan.

I had big dreams of saving up for a home and decided I wanted to start saving more and not be as aggressive in my student loans. And somehow First Republic came back to mind.

If I decide to refinance, I would only be refinancing $50,000 rather than $100,000 I had planned in 2018 which means I would have a lower monthly payment.

With my fully funded $10k emergency fund, I gained the confidence to proceed with the application process once more. I was now over a year in with my current employer and have a 2.5 year experience in my career so I was definitely at a more stable place than I was before.

With the calculated monthly payment of roughly $880, I felt that my emergency fund would be able to cover me for a couple of months in case I was ever unemployed.

So let’s get to the meat of the process!

Application Process

October 2019 was when I started from step 1 which was to go to their website, enter in the loan amount I wanted to refinance as well as some questionnaire such as my approximate credit score.

You can play around with their calculator to get an idea of your monthly payment and your interest rate. These are fixed interest rates with the lowest being a 1.95% 5 year loan (with the caveat that you have to keep $10,000 or 20% of your original loan balance in their checking account.)

Right away a representative got in touch with me. Unlike the first time around, I noticed that this representative was located in First Republic headquarters in San Francisco rather than a local representative that had contacted me back in 2018. 

She sent me an email and also left a voicemail offering her assistance with any questions I may have. I gave her a call back and I was pleasantly surprised with how transparent she was with the process.

First Republic makes no secret that their true intention in offering such low student loan interest rate is to entice customers (or in their words: build a trusting relationship) to continue banking with them after their student loans are paid off. 

Criteria and Perks

It’s no secret that First Republic is quite selective in their application process, the main criteria being you must live in close proximity to a First Republic branch which is not nationwide. My representative was very upfront with the criteria when I asked her specifically what the basic criteria to qualify were: 

1. Have at least 15% of the debt amount you want to refinance in cash (saving/checking account)
2. Have made/been making student loan payments for at least 3 months
3. Credit score > 750
4. At least a 1:1 ratio of salary to debt

Once you are approved you must:

1. Open a First Republic ATM rebate checking account
2. Maintain a direct deposit to checking account and automatic payment to loan
3. Maintain a balance of at least $3,500 in checking account

The rates listed are fixed rates and are the same for everyone regardless of credit score as long as it is over 750. To get the best rates, you must maintain a higher balance in your checking account. The best rate I found was a 1.95% interest rate for a 5 year term with a required minimum balance of $10,000 or 20% of original loan balance, whichever is higher.

The website and my loan agreement did not mention it, but my representative stated multiple times that this balance is only required for the first year to keep your rate. Once that year is passed, a minimum $3,500 balance to avoid monthly maintenance fee is enough.

I decided to go with a 2.2% rate with the required $5,000 balance in the checking account. I figured the 0.25% interest rate saving wasn’t worth keeping my $5,000 tied up with their checking account when my savings account where I usually keep my emergency fund offered a 1.70% APY.

Although I signed up for the 5 year term, I plan to completely pay it off sooner as First Republic offers a rebate on interest paid up 2% of the original loan amount if everything is paid off within 4 years.

In my case, I can get back $1,000 if I pay off my loan in 4 years which I was planning on doing anyways.

Next Step: 2020

After getting all the information I needed, I ended up actually delaying the process once more. I wanted to wait till 2020 to officially apply because I was waiting for my 2019 W2 to come.

Had I applied in 2019, I would have had to use my 2018 W2’s which was when I was making less and in between 2 jobs. I didn’t want them to give me any reason to reject my application so I figured a 3 month wait was worth it.

Plus, I wanted to get closer to my goal of $50k in student loan balance before I refinanced.

So after apologizing to the representative that had been so helpful to me, I told her I wasn’t ready to refinance in October 2019 (didn’t tell her the specifics), but promised that I would reach back out to her once I was ready in 2020.

As soon as my W2 was available online, I reached back out to my representative mid January 2020. She was once again prompt with her response and followed up with the documents needed to move on with the application:

1. Copy of ID
2. A recent paystub
3. Copies of bank/brokerage statements
4. W2

At first I was alarmed with the request for the bank/brokerage statements, but it was needed as proof to meet the criteria of having >15% of the loan amount in savings.

I actually did not disclose all my brokerage statements, just my savings and checking account and that was enough.

Prior to my representative sending the application, we had to do what’s called a pre-qualification where she basically asked me all the information that I would need to provide in the official application over the phone to make sure I would meet the requirements for approval so I wouldn’t be doing an application in vain.

She sent me the application right after our phone call and I completed everything the next day. After receiving verification that my application was received, there was a 1.5 week period before I received an email that I was approved for the loan.

It was a good thing that I had lurked around reddit threads so much and came across a comment saying there was a 1.5 week waiting period or else I would have been alarmed as my previous interactions have been immediate.

Since I used my mutual friend’s referral, I was automatically placed under the same First Republic manager as my mutual friend who sent me an email saying he would be my direct contact from here on to manage my banking.

The manager contacted me the next day to schedule a phone call to introduce himself and set me up with a checking account. The same day as my phone call, I went to a local First Republic branch and was set up with my ATM Rebate checking account, along with my debit card that they had already made so I didn’t have to wait for it to come in the mail! I wrote a check to deposit $5,000 into the account and left within 20 minutes.

The process was fast and of course everyone along the way were courteous and emphasized their focus on customer service and building a long-term relationship with their customers. 

As soon as my checking account was created, I was sent a pay-off form to complete online.

Refinancing from Nelnet

I was quite confused with completing the pay-off form in order for First Republic to send the money to pay-off my $50,000 Nelnet loans as there was no specification on how to allocate the money I was sending to make sure it was applied to the correct group.

Both my initial representative and my newly assigned managers did not seem to know what to do either which makes me think most people either refinance their full loan or they just don’t deal with Nelnet enough.

Thankfully, regardless of how the money was applied, Nelnet has always automatically put in additional payments to the loan group with the highest interest rate first, which was what I wanted.

The payment was posted on my Nelnet exactly a week after I complete the online pay-off form. Success!

First Republic Account

I had signed up for the First Republic mobile banking right after seeing my loan payoff come through and while my checking account was attached, I had to follow up with my representative on hooking up the loan account for me to see online as it hadn’t shown up even after the successful payoff.

Once it did show up, I noticed that they had already set up the automatic payment from my checking to my student loan every month beginning one month after I signed my refinance documents which was one of the criteria.

All that was left for me to do was to put some of my money from work to be direct deposited to my First Republic checking account every paycheck.

While I took over 2 years to go through with the refinance, based on my timeline, the entire process should take most people around 3 weeks to complete from start to finish as long as you qualify!

Extra Perk

Since I delayed this post so much and ended up completely forgetting to publish till now, it allows me to add on that a month since my refinance, I’ve successfully made my first payment seamlessly (through no action on my part since everything was automatic) and even received a welcome gift from First Republic in the form of a travel bag!