The PenFed site has a dedicated section for student loans. From here, you can choose to either apply for an in-school student loan or a student loan refinancing. We opted to refinance our student loan, at which stage we arrived at the following home screen.
After clicking through ‘Find My Rate’, PenFed prompted us to enter our personal details, including name, address, phone number, SSN, and the amount we wanted to borrow. On completing this basic information, we had to complete a test to assess our loan eligibility.
Following our completion of this simple application screen, there are five further stages to assess eligibility for student loan refinancing. The first step asked us to reconfirm personal data, with the second reconfirming our phone details and contact preferences. The third step was to verify our housing and occupation status. The fourth step was to enter the details of all existing loans that were in place. The final stage of the process was to sign an Election, Terms & Conditions, Privacy Policy, and Application and Solicitation Disclosure.
The application process took 15 minutes in total. After submitting our information, we were sent for a credit check, which returned an instant result. Our credit check returned successfully, and we PenFed invited us to open a PenFed membership. There were no fees associated with opening the account, but we needed to deposit a minimum of $5. After this, a range of loan products became available to us.
After selecting the rate we wanted for our refinancing, we were invited to review the loan to ensure it was what we wanted. Overall, the process was very smooth and efficient.