LendingClub Review

Wednesday, August 17th

2022 Car Loan Refinance Reviews

LendingClub

• Refinancing available for cars with outstanding balances of $5,000 to $55,000 and at least 24 months of remaining payments
• Cars must be 10 years old or newer and have under 120,000 miles
• No origination fees or prepayment penalties
• Low APR interest rates
• Not available in all states or for all makes/models of vehicles

LendingClub has gone through some changes in recent years: while they used to be a peer-to-peer borrowing and investment platform, essentially crowdfunding all types of loans, they are now structured more like a typical financial institution and fund all loans on their own. That's worth knowing, because you may find wording as you browse the site that still makes reference to "lenders" or "lending networks" . (At the time of this review, their main article explaining auto refinancing hadn't been updated to reflect the new structure, for example.) You'll have a more streamlined borrowing experience now, but don't expect to get multiple offers for your refi loan.

Watch out for excluded states and vehicles

We also had to read the fine print to learn that LendingClub doesn't offer auto refinancing across the board. Their loans are only available in 35 states; notable in the list of exclusions are New York, Colorado, and DC. There are also several vehicle makes that won't be eligible for a refi loan here, including Hummer, Saab, Suzuki and Nissan Leaf, as well as any domestic truck designated as a "3500" or with a payload capacity of a ton or more.

No SSN required to get refi loan quotes

To get a refi quote, you'll start by choosing your primary goal: getting the lowest possible monthly payment or lowering your interest rate. (You can also choose "just curious" .) When we chose the latter, we were taken to a surprisingly-simple quote application: no Social Security Number required, just our name, address, phone number, birthdate, and annual individual income. Unfortunately, we were given an unexplained error page when we applied and got no quotes for our auto refinance loan rate. That may be due to the fact that we opted for the "just curious" setting; you may need to play with the settings to get a quote specific to your car loan and borrowing goals.

Lots of positive recent feedback from clients

How about LendingClub's reputation? Their restructuring led to a change in their rating from the Better Business Bureau, from "A" to "Not Rated" , in order to give the BBB time to gather more feedback before evaluating the new-and-improved service. Looking at the most recent reviews from clients using LendingClub for a variety of loan types, we were pleased to see that the vast majority give the company a rating of 4 or 5 stars. While most of them made no reference specifically to auto refinancing, it's encouraging to see repeat borrowers among the reviews.

Worth considering for car refinancing

Is LendingClub a good choice for auto refinancing loans? Maybe. They'll need to keep expanding the states where they offer financing if they want to compete with other lenders, because too many potential customers are excluded by their 35-state service area. And, the jury's still out as far as the BBB listing goes, waiting to be updated after the company's move away from peer-to-peer funding. But, we wouldn't be surprised to see LendingClub move up in our rankings in the future, based on the ample positive, recent feedback from people who have used them to get loans.