We collaborate with a broad range of student loan organizations to design and execute interim and permanent financing plans in support of their student loan and refinancing loan programs. We have the most experienced and active specialty practices in the student loan finance industry, with a 7-member team of bankers boasting 169 years of combined experience in the sector.

Areas of Expertise

Our student loan experts provide student lenders and debt issuers a comprehensive menu of products and services, including:

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    Loan program design and modification services

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    Loan portfolio and enterprise valuation services

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    Letters of credit and liquidity facilities

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    Temporary warehouse facilities for ongoing loan origination programs

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    Interest rate protection agreements

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    Permanent financing solutions

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    Strategic advisory services

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    Bond proceeds reinvestment solutions

The Nonprofit Sector Market Leader

Our student loan practice has an enduring reputation, earned over decades, for delivering best in class products, services and financing solutions to state agency and nonprofit student loan organizations. As evidence of the trust our clients have placed in us over the years, RBC is the #1 ranked underwriter for nonprofit and state agency private student loan debt issues since the beginning of 2017, with approximately $4.6 billion of senior managed issues for 23 different issuers and a 71.4% market share.

Nonprofit & State Agency Lead Manager Rankings
Private Student Loan & Private Refinancing Loan Issues Only
January 1, 2017 through July 7, 2022 (1)(2)(3)
Manager Par Amount ($ millions) Rank Mkt. Share (%) No of Issues
RBC Capital Markets $4,561.06 1 71.4% 34
Bank of America 1,763.01 2 27.6% 28
PNC Capital Markets 64.10 3 1.0% 1
Industry Total $6,388.17 100.0% 63

(1) Source: Bloomberg and RBC Capital Markets
(2) Negotiated issues only, full credit to Senior Manager; and
(3) Includes all municipal and corporate CUSIP Nonprofit and State Agency private student loan transactions

 

A Trusted and Experienced Financial Partner

 

Education loan finance was established as a specialty practice at RBC in 1996, yet the senior members of our Student Loan Group trace their roots in the sector to its formative years, from the late 1970s to mid-1980s. Phoenix-based group head Jeff Wagner, a 35-year industry veteran, along with New York-based Paul Sheldon (40 years), Gary Wolf (44 years) Hing Loi (34 years), and Brian Kares (13 years) represent the most experienced collection of student loan specialists assembled by any firm.

Our student loan financing activities are supported by one of the best capitalized, highest rated and most respected financial institutions in the world. Founded in 1864, RBC is one of North America’s leading financial services companies, and among the largest and safest banks in the world. With over $1.4 trillion in assets and 89,000 employees worldwide, RBC serves 17+ million individual, corporate and governmental clients through offices in the U.S., Canada and 34 other countries. The strength RBC’s balance sheet and durability of its long-term ratings (“Aa1”/“AA-”/“AA”) provides our clients with a trusted financial partner they can depend on—not withstanding prevailing economic conditions.

Since the student loan industry began to emerge from the credit crisis in 2008, RBC has completed student loan financings of approximately $163 billion, including 264 separate lead managed transactions totaling $125.8 billion
as either lead manager, lender, advisor or swap provider*.

Recent Transactions

Recent Transaction Tombstones

In addition to the organizations shown above, RBC is frequently tapped by the largest and most frequent for-profit student loan-backed debt issuers to provide lending facilities and to senior manage their debt transactions, including Navient (Federal and Private loans), Sallie Mae Bank (Private loans) and Nelnet (Federal loans).

Our Senior Banking Team

Jeffrey J. Wagner

Managing Director & Sector Head

+1.602.381.5369

Mr. Wagner is a Managing Director in the Municipal Finance Group of RBC Capital Markets, LLC and divides his time between the firm’s offices in Phoenix and Los Angeles. He has primary coverage responsibility for the firm’s student loan clients, as well as for several colleges and universities in California.

Mr. Wagner began his investment banking career in New York in 1986 when he joined the public finance department of Manufacturers Hanover Securities Corporation as a quantitative analyst. After spending six years at “Manny Hanny”, he joined PaineWebber in 1992 as one of four founding members of its New York-based education loan finance team. He spent four years at PaineWebber before departing in 1996 for an opportunity to launch a national education loan finance practice for one of RBC Capital Markets’ predecessor firms. By 2007 he had grown this effort from a two-person team in Phoenix to 13 professionals in three different offices. The firm’s education loan finance practice remains one of the most productive and well-respected practices of its kind, and consistently ranks as the most active lead managers.

He has completed over $48 billion in financings on behalf of 35 separate organizations since 1986, including state agencies, nonprofit organizations and private colleges and universities, and is responsible for introducing numerous new financing products, debt structuring techniques and computer modeling innovations. His current clients include the Utah State Board of Regents, Minnesota Office of Higher Education, Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency, Midwestern University, New Hampshire Higher Education Loan Corporation, Alaska Student Loan Corporation and NorthStar Education Finance.

An active participant in higher education finance industry trade groups, such as the Education Finance Council (EFC), the National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO) and the Western Association of College and University Business Officers (WACUBO), Mr. Wagner is a well-known municipal finance industry veteran. He is often called upon to speak at industry conferences, issuer and investor seminars, client board meetings and other industry-related events.

Mr. Wagner is a registered securities representative, currently holding Series 7 and Series 63 licenses, and holds a B.S. in Business Administration from the State University of New York at Albany, with concentrations in Finance and Management Information Systems, and an M.B.A. in Finance from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Business.

Paul Sheldon

Managing Director

+1.212.618.3506

Paul B. Sheldon, Managing Director

Prior to joining RBC Capital markets in December, 2018, Mr. Sheldon was a principle at S L Capital Strategies LLC, a company he founded in 2007 which provides student loan companies with transactional and strategic advice.

Prior to forming SLCS, Mr. Sheldon worked on Wall Street with specialties in  Municipal Finance and Student Loan Finance for 27 years,  first at Chase Manhattan Bank (now JPMorgan), and for 16 years at Citigroup.  At Chase and Citigroup, Mr. Sheldon handled numerous student loan assignments.    During his years as head of Citigroup’s student loan investment banking effort, Citigroup ranked as the dominant bank, both in the issuance of debt, and in serving as advisor on various M&A assignments, strategic assignments, and portfolio sale and valuations.

In addition to management responsibilities for the group, Mr. Sheldon was the key officer handling many of the firm’s clients.  He has executed every type of debt security used in student loan finance, including all fixed and variable structures, all taxable and tax-exempt structures, all types of liquidity and other credit enhancing structures, warehousing facilities, etc.

Mr. Sheldon graduated from Columbia Business School with an MBA.

Hing C. Loi

Director

+1.212.618.2221

Hing joined RBC Capital Markets in New York in 2011 as a senior quantitative banker for our state housing agencies and student loan clients, following a 21 year career at Citi where he was the senior quantitative banker in their student loan group for over a decade, and was the lead banker for multiple accounts. Prior to that, he provided banking services to both state housing agencies and student loan agencies at Citi. Before joining RBC, Hing co-found Fynanz, Inc. (now known as LendKey) a private student loan startup, and served as its Chief Financial Officer and Chief Risk Officer for 2 ½ years, where he underwrote and originated over $60 million of private student loans. To date, Mr. Loi has structured over $150 billion in taxable and tax-exempt debt financings. Mr. Loi holds an Executive M.B.A. from Fordham School of Business, graduating with the highest academic honor, and a BA degree in Computer Science from Columbia University with a three year completion.

Gary D. Wolf

Director

+1.212.618.5647

Mr. Wolf, a Director in the New York Municipal Finance office of RBC Capital Markets, specializes in the quantitative analysis of public and structured finance.

Mr. Wolf began working in the public finance industry in 1978 and joined RBC Capital Markets in 2006. As head of Paine Webber's analytics group, he helped build that firm's student loan finance practice, created its proprietary student loan software, and engineered financings and refundings for housing, public power, general obligation, convention center, resource recovery, and other projects. In 1984 he moved to Manufacturers Hanover (later Chemical Securities), where he again headed the Public Finance Department's analytics group. Among other significant contributions to structured financings for federal, state, foreign, and local issuers, he advised the US Department of Agriculture on the first-ever securitization of federal direct loans.

In 1995 Mr. Wolf moved from investment banking to the software industry. At Trepp LLC and its successors, and later at subsidiaries of GMAC Commercial Mortgage, he collaborated on the design and development of enterprise software for originating and underwriting commercial mortgages. His integrated Excel- based underwriting models were used by large mortgage lenders in three countries.

At RBC Capital Markets, he is responsible for the analytics on some of the Department's most mathematically complex transactions. He has structured billions of dollars in new bond issues, developed optimization models for refunding bond selection, and managed the analytics supporting the workout of failed Auction Rate Securities. He also conducts the new analyst training program.

Mr. Wolf holds a B.S. in mathematics from Tulane University. He is currently registered with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, Inc. with a Series 7 license.