How It Works
Leveraging the power of collective bargaining, Juno uses group buying power to negotiate better rates, terms, and benefits for our members.
While anyone can join at any time, our negotiations happen every spring and deals are ready in June - no credit check to sign up, no cost to use our services, and no commitment to take a loan.
Step 1: Build a large group of students, graduates and families seeking loans.
Potential borrowers join the Juno student loan negotiation group for free.
We ask future members to provide the following details when signing up:
- Contact Information
- Education Information
- Financial Information
Specifically, we ask for the following optional financial information to assist with lender negotiations:
- Estimated credit score
- Expected annual income (for many this is zero and that's fine)
- Co-signer status
- Estimated amount of loans needed
We don’t use this information for loan applications, we do use it to inform lenders on the size of the loan pool along with the general creditworthiness of our group. You will have an opportunity to check individual rates once the deals are live each year - no obligation or commitment to apply or take a loan.
Step 2: Ask lenders to compete for our member's business.
We kick off negotiations with potential lending partners.
We reach out to leading national lenders as well as regional loan providers, and we highlight the size of our negotiation group and key features or terms we want for our members. Potential lending partners receive anonymized data and Juno opens discussions to ensure future partners are able to meet the needs of the majority of our members.
Lenders evaluate the group and submit proposals.
These proposals help us understand the rates, terms, and negotiated benefits that our members will qualify for. We ask potential partners to provide flexible repayment terms, including deferment options, as well as both fixed and variable rate offers when possible.
In addition to this process, we also do extra research on nonprofit and other lenders that specialize in providing cost savings student loan options. During this research, we carefully evaluate the same range of factors we do for those who submit bids. We negotiate with these lenders to obtain special benefits for our members that are not available if you go to the lender directly.
We evaluate and select future partners.
We evaluate each proposal using a wide range of criteria, with a heavy emphasis on rate discounts, price matching, and exclusive terms. We also evaluate other features, like:
- Interest Rate
- Fees (Application, Origination, Prepayment, etc.)
- Term Options (5 Year, 10 Year, etc.)
- Repayment Options
- Customer Service and Ease of Loan Application
- Death and Disability Policy
- Eligibility Criteria
- and a lot more.
Our goal is to ensure our options are the best available.
Step 3: Share the negotiated deals with members.
We inform our members.
We share the negotiated deals with our members by June 1st every year, and we hold webinars to go over the potential offers, as well as any questions about the process or features.
Members check rates and terms through Juno.
Our members can start by checking rates (no impact on credit to receive estimates from Juno), then navigate to the application with the lender who has the best offer if interested. There’s no obligation to apply, and there’s no commitment to take a loan.
We monitor lender commitments.
We use platform testing to ensure our members receive the rates, terms, and/or benefits we negotiated, and we will follow up with surveys or questions for feedback that we can share with our partners.