IOWA CITY, Iowa—The University of Iowa Community Credit Union is offering a new benefit to employees with student loan debt—it is permitting those employees to refinance it with the credit union and pay no interest.
"We understand that many students come out of college faced with the tall burden of student loan debt," President and CEO Jeff Disterhoft said in a press release, "so we decided to offer this option to our staff in order to get them out of debt much faster."
As an example, the credit union noted the average student-loan debt for a class of 2015 graduate is a little more than $35,000. Assuming an interest rate of 4.5% and repayment term of 120 months, over the first five years of the loan a person would reduce their debt to $19,493 and pay $6,296 in interest. If employed at the UICCU, by taking advantage of the new employee benefit and keeping their payment the same, they could reduce their debt to $13,220 and pay no interest over the period.