Key Takeaways
- Chase exited student lending in 2013, Capital One never meaningfully participated, and Bank of America, US Bank, and TD Bank have all since pulled out. Searching for student loans at any of these banks is a dead end.
- The 2010 Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act ended the Federal Family Education Loan program, which let banks originate federally backed student loans. That single law removed most of the profit incentive, and many banks followed by exiting private lending too.
- If you need a student loan, start at studentaid.gov and file the FAFSA. Federal Direct loans come with income-driven repayment, PSLF eligibility, and discharge protections that no private lender matches.
- If you’ve already hit federal borrowing limits, the private lenders still actively in the market include Sallie Mae, College Ave, SoFi, Earnest, Ascent, PNC, and Citizens. Each has a different co-signer policy and rate structure.
- Compare private student loan rates and get quotes
The Short Answer for All Five Banks
If you searched for Chase student loans, Capital One student loans, Bank of America student loans, US Bank student loans, or TD Bank student loans, you landed in the right place for bad news delivered quickly: none of them offer student loans to new borrowers. They’re out of this market, some for over a decade.
This isn’t an oversight or a product gap you can work around by walking into a branch. It’s a deliberate exit driven by a 2010 law that changed the economics of student lending fundamentally. Understanding what happened, and knowing where to actually borrow, is what the rest of this article is for.
One thing before you go further: if you haven’t filed the FAFSA yet, do that first. Federal Direct loans come with income-driven repayment plans, Public Service Loan Forgiveness eligibility, and discharge protections that no private lender matches. The FAFSA login and financial aid guide walks through the process. Private student loans, from any lender, should fill the gap after federal options are exhausted.
Why Banks Left Student Lending: The 2010 Law That Changed Everything
For decades, the Federal Family Education Loan program let private banks originate federally guaranteed student loans and collect a government-backed return. Banks took on the origination and servicing; the federal government absorbed most of the default risk. The arrangement worked well enough for lenders, if not always for borrowers.
The Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 ended it. Congress eliminated the FFEL program entirely and shifted all federal student loan origination to the Department of Education directly. Banks lost the government-backed profit margin overnight.
What followed was a slow-motion exit from private student lending as well. Private loans don’t carry federal guarantees, the borrower pool skews younger with thin credit histories, repayment windows stretch 10 to 20 years, and default rates are harder to predict. For a large bank with a mortgage desk, a credit card portfolio, and auto lending generating faster returns, student loans became hard to justify. One by one, the majors stepped back.
Chase: Out Since 2013
Chase was a meaningful student lender until it wasn’t. In September 2013, Chase announced it would stop accepting applications for new student loans. The stated reason was a shrinking market. Enrollment had softened and Chase’s student loan originations had declined for two consecutive years. The bank transferred its existing student loan portfolio to other servicers.
If you have an old Chase student loan, your servicer changed years ago. Check your most recent statement or log into studentaid.gov to confirm where your federal loans sit. For any private loan that was originally Chase-issued, your servicer correspondence should have notified you of the transfer.
Chase today offers credit cards, auto loans, mortgages, and HELOCs. Student loans are not on the menu and haven’t been for 12 years.
Capital One: Never Meaningfully in the Market
Capital One’s absence from student lending is less of a dramatic exit and more of a non-entry. The bank built its consumer franchise on credit cards and, later, auto lending. Student loans don’t appear in its current or recent product set in any meaningful way.
Capital One’s current offerings include credit cards (it’s one of the larger issuers in the country), auto loans, and savings and checking accounts. If you found a reference suggesting Capital One does student loans, it’s outdated or wrong. They don’t.
Bank of America: Another Early Exit
Bank of America wound down its student loan origination program years ago. Like Chase, BofA was a FFEL participant before the 2010 law change, and the departure from federal origination was followed by a retreat from private student lending as well.
The bank remains a full-service consumer lender for products that generate stronger margins: credit cards, auto loans, mortgages, and home equity lines. Student loans are not among them.
US Bank: No New Student Loans
US Bank quietly exited new student loan originations. Existing borrowers who took out US Bank student loans prior to the exit should check their servicer correspondence for details on where their accounts transferred. New applicants cannot get a student loan through US Bank.
US Bank continues to offer a range of consumer lending products including auto loans, personal loans, and home equity products. Just not student loans.
TD Bank: Not in U.S. Student Lending
TD Bank does not currently offer student loans in the United States. The Canadian parent company has U.S. retail banking operations, but student lending is not part of its U.S. consumer product set.
TD Bank’s U.S. consumer products include checking and savings accounts, credit cards, and home equity lending. For student loan needs, TD Bank is not an option.
Where to Actually Get a Student Loan
The market didn’t disappear when the big banks left. It consolidated around a different set of players.
Start with Federal Loans
Before contacting any private lender, go to studentaid.gov and file the FAFSA. Federal Direct Subsidized and Unsubsidized loans are the baseline. Graduate students have access to Grad PLUS loans. Parents borrowing for a dependent undergraduate can use Parent PLUS.
Federal loans come with protections private lenders don’t offer: income-driven repayment plans that cap your payment as a percentage of discretionary income, PSLF eligibility for borrowers working in qualifying public service, forbearance and deferment options during financial hardship, and discharge provisions in cases of death, total and permanent disability, and certain school closures.
Those protections have real dollar value. A borrower on PSLF track who refinances $60,000 in federal loans into a private loan to save $3,500 in interest can forfeit tens of thousands in forgiveness. The math often doesn’t favor private lending until federal limits are genuinely exhausted.
Banks Still Actively in Student Lending
PNC Bank and Citizens Bank are two large regional banks that remained in private student lending after the industry consolidation. Both offer undergraduate and graduate loan products with competitive terms for strong-credit borrowers.
Sallie Mae is technically chartered as a bank but operates almost entirely as a student loan specialist. It’s one of the largest private student lenders by volume and covers a wide range of programs, including some professional and career training loans other lenders won’t touch.
Online Specialists
SoFi, Earnest, College Ave, and Ascent are among the lenders that built their businesses specifically around student lending and refinancing. Their underwriting models vary, their co-signer policies differ, and their rate structures are competitive for the right borrower profile.
On rates: when a lender advertises a starting APR, that rate lives in a footnote. College Ave, for example, advertises rates starting in the low-to-mid single digits for variable-rate loans. The footnote specifies a creditworthy co-signer with a strong FICO, auto-pay enrollment, and the shortest available repayment term. Most student borrowers, especially undergraduates without established credit, don’t qualify for the floor rate. You will likely receive a rate several percentage points higher.
That spread matters. Take a $20,000 private loan over 10 years. At a 6% rate, the monthly payment is $222 and total interest paid is $6,645. At 10%, the same loan costs $264 per month and $11,680 in interest over the life of the loan. The difference between qualifying for a lower rate tier and a higher one is $5,035, and that gap is almost entirely determined by whether you have a creditworthy co-signer.
This is the central practical fact about private student lending: for most undergraduates without an established credit history, the rate you actually get depends more on the co-signer than on anything else. The best rates in this market assume a co-signer with a 740+ FICO and a debt-to-income ratio well below 40%. If your co-signer doesn’t clear that bar, prequalify and see the actual rate tier before committing.
For a current comparison of active lenders including rate ranges and co-signer release policies, the best private student loans guide covers the field with current disclosures.
Credit Unions
Navy Federal Credit Union, PenFed, and DCU are among the credit unions currently offering student loans. LendKey operates as a marketplace that aggregates credit union and community bank student loan products, which can be useful if you want to compare options across multiple smaller institutions in one application.
Credit union rates can be competitive, particularly for borrowers who are already members or who qualify for membership. Eligibility rules vary by institution: Navy Federal is primarily for military-affiliated borrowers and their families, while PenFed’s membership requirements are broader.
What to Do If You’re Searching for One of These Banks
The direct action from here depends on where you are in the process.
If you haven’t borrowed yet, file the FAFSA first, accept all federal aid you’re offered, and then assess whether you have a remaining gap. If you do, prequalify with two or three private lenders using their soft-pull rate check before accepting any offer. The prequalification pull won’t affect your credit score; the hard pull that follows when you formally accept will.
If you’re looking to refinance existing debt, the lender list is different from the private origination list. SoFi, Earnest, and others refinance both federal and private student loans. Refinancing federal loans into private means giving up income-driven repayment and PSLF eligibility permanently. That trade makes sense for borrowers with stable, high income and no expectation of public service forgiveness. It doesn’t make sense for borrowers still in repayment variability or working toward PSLF.
If you had an existing loan with one of these banks and you’re not sure where it ended up, log into studentaid.gov to see all federal loans and current servicers. For private loans that were Chase-issued or originated through another exited bank, check your email history for servicer transfer notices, or pull your credit report to find the current holder.
