Laurel Road (formerly known as Darien Rowayton Bank) is an online financial services company headquartered in New York City. Laurel Road was initially founded as the national lending division of Darien Rowayton Bank (DRB) in 2013 and acquired by

KeyBank KeyBank is an American regional bank headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio, and the 27th largest bank in the United States. Organized under the publicly traded KeyCorp, KeyBank was formed from the 1994 merger of the Cleveland-based Society Corpora ...

in 2019. Laurel Road operates in all 50 states of the US. The company reported that $9 billion in federal and private school loans had originated through its platform up to September 23, 2021.

History

In 2006, Darien Rowayton Bank was founded in Connecticut, and in 2009, the company was acquired by Alcar LLC and a new management team was put in place. In 2013, DRB launched the DRB Student Loan for professionals with graduate and undergraduate degree to refinance and consolidate federal and private student loans. By February 2015, DRB expanded its national student loan refinancing program to include residents and fellows, enabling them to refinance their loans upon securing employment contracts. In 2017, DRB announced the rebranding of its national online lending division to Laurel Road combining the two entities and becoming Laurel Road Bank. In 2018, Laurel Road partnered with the

American Medical Association The American Medical Association (AMA) is an American professional association and lobbying group of physicians and medical students. This medical association was founded in 1847 and is headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. Membership was 271,660 ...

. In April 2019, KeyBank, one of the nation’s largest bank-based financial services companies and a member of

FDIC The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) is a State-owned enterprises of the United States, United States government corporation supplying deposit insurance to depositors in American commercial banks and savings banks. The FDIC was cr ...

, acquired Laurel Road. The three bank branches in southeast

Connecticut Connecticut ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, New York (state), New York to the west, and Long Island Sound to the south. ...

owned by Laurel Road were not included in this transaction. Consequently, Laurel Road shifted its base to

Manhattan Manhattan ( ) is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the Boroughs of New York City, five boroughs of New York City. Coextensive with New York County, Manhattan is the County statistics of the United States#Smallest, larg ...

. In 2021, Laurel Road started a

digital bank A neobank is a type of direct bank that operates exclusively using online banking without traditional physical branch (banking), branches. They challenge traditional banks. In contrast to direct banks, in many cases, neobanks do not have their ow ...

for

physician A physician, medical practitioner (British English), medical doctor, or simply doctor is a health professional who practices medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring health through the Medical education, study, Med ...

nurses Nursing is a health care profession that "integrates the art and science of caring and focuses on the protection, promotion, and optimization of health and human functioning; prevention of illness and injury; facilitation of healing; and alle ...

, and

dentist A dentist, also known as a dental doctor, dental physician, dental surgeon, is a health care professional who specializes in dentistry, the branch of medicine focused on the teeth, gums, and mouth. The dentist's supporting team aids in provi ...

s called Laurel Road for Doctors, to help them with student debt. It also launched Laurel Road Checking.

References

{{Reflist Financial services companies of the United States 2013 establishments in Connecticut