CommonBond Expands Into Residential Solar Financing

CommonBond, a pioneering Fintech company, announces today the launch of its new Solar financing business. By providing affordable financing options for the installation of solar panels, the company is enabling more homeowners to save money on their monthly electricity bill and reduce their carbon footprint.

Best known for its Student lending business, CommonBond launched its Solar financing business in “stealth mode” in Q3 2021 and is already on pace to do $1 billion of Solar originations in 2022.

“We’ve built best-in-class lending technology that enables speed, simplicity, and savings for customers in multiple product categories,” said David Klein, CEO & Co-Founder of CommonBond. “Our mission has always been to provide our customers with differentiated products that meet their evolving financials needs, and Solar is our next big product at scale.”

CommonBond expanded into Solar for a few strategic reasons:

  • 77% of its customers have a house or intend to buy one within three years of refinancing their student loan with the company
  • The company’s extensible lending technology allows for rapid product innovation to meet the evolving needs of its customers and to fill unmet needs in the market
  • The impact of Solar – and ESG more broadly – is consistent with CommonBond’s mission to help consumers and have broad impact. In its first full year of Solar originations, CommonBond expects to reduce the need for the burning of 100 million pounds of coal

“Residential rooftop solar power generation is one of the best ways to reduce your carbon footprint, but adoption has been slower than it should be,” said Robb Granado, President of CommonBond. “We believe that cost and awareness are two major obstacles to residential solar adoption. CommonBond has built a unique set of capabilities for Solar Installers and Homeowners to address those obstacles.”

There are three ways solar installers work with CommonBond to increase sales velocity and deliver best in class service to their customers:

  1. API-based point of sale integrations for a fully integrated sales and financing experience
  2. Web and app-based point of sale portals for installers to quickly and easily access CommonBond financing solutions
  3. Integrations with leading solar proposal generation tools

“Our technology lowers costs for both installers and homeowners. And the friendly service we’re known for is a breath of fresh air for everyone,” said Granado.

CommonBond routinely achieves an 80+ net promoter score (NPS) among its customers, which puts CommonBond among the world’s best service brands. Early residential solar customers are big promoters of the brand and have highlighted key dimensions of the CommonBond offering, including “great rate”, “excellent service”, “easy to work with”, and “reliable”.

In 2020, CommonBond was named to the Inc 5000 list, which highlights the fastest growing private companies in the U.S. The company grew 2x in 2021 and expects to double again in 2022. In June of last year, the company welcomed Sonali Sambhus, senior technology leader at Block (fka Square), to its Board of Directors. And in 2021, the company surpassed $2.5 million in donations to its “1-for-1” social mission.

For more information, visit www.commonbond.co.

About CommonBond

CommonBond is a leading financial technology company that offers a suite of lending solutions to consumers and enterprises. Consumers benefit from more affordable, transparent, and simple ways to pay their loans. Enterprises benefit from tech-forward customer engagement capabilities to scale their businesses.

To date, CommonBond has reached nearly 1 million users and powers lending solutions for 1000s of enterprises nationwide. CommonBond is the first and only finance company with a “1-for-1” social mission: for every loan it funds, CommonBond also funds the education of a child in need, through its partnership with Pencils of Promise.