YOU ARE MORE THAN JUST YOUR STUDENT LOAN.
Shur is a Public Benefit Corporation that — by 2028 — has the goal of connecting the financial services industry to 9 million Professionals with Student Loans.
Our data, products, services, and financial ecosystem help borrowers move from debt to wealth creation, while building billions in new revenue for banks and insurance companies.
Impact Report
Letter from the CEO
Millions of Professionals with Student Loans across America face profound financial challenges. I founded Shur because I deeply understand these problems. There was not a time – from college graduation through my 40s – when I wasn’t balancing the demands of professional life, the desire to create family wealth and monthly repayment of the student loans I took to attend Morehouse College and Harvard Kennedy School.
These Professionals with Student Loans need support, financial advice and products to financially navigate their early careers. This is why we are building Shur.
Shur’s mission is to create a powerful economic support system for this vital group of Americans, building a clear path and opportunities to financial wellness.
Here’s the problem:
Currently, there is no comprehensive economic ecosystem to unlock consumer value and community for almost 20% of the American working population. Thirty million Professionals with Student Loans—aged 21 to 40 and those early in their careers—are missing out on at least two decades of wealth-building opportunities during this crucial period. The reality is that for these borrowers in the workforce doing the right things, traditional credit scoring fails to capture their true value as consumers.
We also know that banks, insurance companies, and credit unions are losing out on $2 billion in revenue annually by overlooking the 2 million graduates with student loans entering the workforce. These institutions and broader financial services systems simply do not know how to reach, serve, and create wealth-building products for this cohort of Professionals with Student Loans and their families.
The average borrower owes $37.3K and takes 20 years to repay their loan. $1.6 trillion in federal student loans are outstanding. ~$100 billion in new loans are issued every year in the U.S. The population of Professionals with Student Loans is evergreen. (Education Data Initiative)
In 2019, we conducted an extensive landscape study of key players in the sector, including the Department of Education, Federal Student Aid (FSA), Treasury, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), along with loan servicers, financial services companies, debt collectors, researchers, academics, data scientists, and borrowers. We engaged in discovery conversations with more than 500 individuals and organizations from these sectors. This study helped us understand the post-pandemic reality for professionals returning to repayment.
Beginning in 2020, Shur, in partnership with Equifax® and VantageScore™, conducted the longest and most comprehensive national and local data program to understand who the student loan borrowers are, who is most likely to default, who succeeds, and why.
Since 2022, we’ve been working with key customers like Edward Jones to understand the challenges borrowers face as they reenter loan repayment post-pandemic. We are exploring how people stretch their family wallets to balance their student loan debt against the desire to build wealth for themselves and their families.
For example, in our work with Edward Jones in St. Louis, we found significant differences between professionals who still carry student loans and those who have paid off their debt. Our inquiry exposed that a person still carrying their student loan at age 32 has a credit score that is, on average, 78 points lower compared to someone with all the same positive factors AND who has paid off their loan.
That means lifetime extra costs for the average Professional with Student Loans is up to $1M from:
- Higher-interest credit cards, auto loans, and insurance premiums.
- Renting, with no clear pathway to home ownership.
- Less savings and available cash to commit to employee stock option plans or retirement.
It also reduces access to prime products, tailored financial advisory services and all of the approaches necessary when creating wealth between 21 and 35.
Based on this data, we are developing steps, approaches, and products through our platform to make the lives of professionals with student loans easier, more coherent, and more financially successful.
Both are doing the right things, Jane's Credit Score is
78 points lower!!!
Lifetime extra costs for Jane because of a lower credit score:
$200k to $1M
- Higher-Interest Credit Cards, Auto Loans, and Insurance Premiums.
- Home: Rents, Doesn’t Own. No Pathway.
- Less Savings and Cash to Commit to ESOP and Retirement.
That means lifetime extra costs for the average borrower with a student loan is up to $1M from:
- Higher-interest credit cards, auto loans, and insurance premiums.
- Renting, with no clear no clear pathway to home ownership.
- Less savings and cash to commit to employee stock option plans or retirement.
It also means less access to prime products, specific financial advisory services, and all of the approaches that are necessary when working to create wealth between 21 and 35.
Our theory is this: if we can
- build a person’s financial plan between 21 and 30
- give them a smart understanding of prime credit products
- ensure their student loan remains intact
- build a high credit score — the key to opening the lock to wealth creation –
then a borrower can become a solid employee, a steady tax player, and an individual who contributes wealth to their community. And their company, membership organization, or city is equally enriched by supporting the borrower’s journey to financial wellness.
Over the next five years, our goal is to bring our products, services, and approach to 9 million Professionals with Student Loans and their families. Along the way, we aim to support them through every major financial decision: going back to school, moving to a great neighborhood, buying their first home, starting a business, building retirement savings, and, yes, making it possible for them to sock enough away so their kids don’t need to borrow for college.
The Shur team is ready. Together, we have decades of experience in entrepreneurship, technology, data (Big, AI, Machine Learning), insurance, banking, investment, consumer products, business development, and scaling enterprises. Our deep network of industry leaders, advisors, and strategic partners supports our mission to help Shur reach national scale.
We want to work with…and for…you to help millions of Americans maximize the value of their higher education and career – while setting Professionals with Student Loans on a powerful and sustainable path to economic success.
2020-2024
$1.4M
Pre-Seed round closed Q’4 ‘23
$800k Revenue
On track to $1M+ in ARR by YE ‘24
Partnerships
Contracts, LOIs, accelerators (Techstars, Bank of America, Northwestern Mutual)
Products in Beta
Borrower Toolkit, Tech Platform, Repayment Interruption Insurance
Data & Scoring
Shur Opportunity Score, Equifax & Vantage Score partnership
Team
5 FT. 30+ part-time and advisors
Our Mission
Creating Success For Professionals With Student Loans
& Organizations
Smart & executable financial plan
Savvy use of prime credit
Avoid missed student loan payments and prevent default
Build a strong credit score
Additional revenue for banks and insurance companies
Deepen relationships & connection to employees and customers
Our Values
Upward-Mobility
Student loan borrowers are worthy and capable of long-term financial success. We work on their behalf every day.
Inclusivity
The right team draws from racial, gender, regional and economic diversity, and we do the hard work to build that team.
Solution-Oriented
We work through the obstacles and we do not get distracted or deterred from our mission.
Innovation
We leverage data and experience from the sector, we innovate and learn from failure, and we drive success for borrowers.
Transparency
We are honest, authentic, and fully transparent with all borrowers, investors, partners and each other.
Our Milestones
Our Roadmap
Borrower
Toolkit
Data
Program
Tech &
AIPlatform (Beta)
Shur Opportunity
Score (Beta)
Repayment
Interruption
Insurance
SOC 2
Compliance (ongoing)
Launching the Shur Enterprise Suite
Connecting Borrowers to Trusted Products and Services
Our Partners & Investors
Our Partners & Investors
Our Work
Collaborating with Equifax® and VantageScore™, Shur is conducting the most extensive multi-year study into the financial dynamics of millions of borrowers who collectively hold $1.6 trillion in student loan debt.
We are focusing on the impact that payments, balances, and credit scores have on millions of borrowers — from the difficult years right after the 2008 financial crisis through to the post-pandemic, post-COVID-19 accommodations reality of today.
Drawing on sample data from the national anonymized credit file of 250 million Americans — and a rich, diverse set of additional appended data — Shur has the nation’s most robust understanding of the aspects that make or break a borrower’s financial health. How much debt do they hold, and what are their payments? Where and how long did borrowers go to college, and what are their graduation rates? The impact of debt on a person’s credit scores. Homeownership rates. Likelihood of delinquency and default. Ethnicity, gender, household income, and geography.
Working with the top corporations, cities, and philanthropy, Shur is using this deep, dynamic knowledge of the borrower’s economic reality, and command of data, to shape national initiatives that reset the financial lives of student loan-holding employees, customers, and taxpayers — representing almost a third of America’s population.
Edward Jones
Edward Jones® – the financial advisory firm with $1.7 trillion in assets under management and more than 8 million clients – is creating a multi-faceted and well-resourced impact experiment focusing on the financial wellness and outcomes for colleagues, customers, and residents living in communities surrounding its headquarters in the St. Louis region. Focusing on the unique challenges of student loan borrowers, Shur is bringing our expertise, platform, data, and financial products to support their vision.
Edward Jones is driving this work through an extensive and powerful network of national and local credit unions, fintechs, CDFIs, city government, and local nonprofits. A critical part of this initiative involves Shur using our national data models to conduct a detailed neighborhood-level analysis of student loan outcomes, credit scores, and wealth-creation capabilities of people living in St. Louis.
Shur’s approach and products are designed to drive revenue growth, brand awareness, and an intergenerational conversation for customers and employees – focusing as much on early success with student loans as on long-term planning for a comfortable retirement. With the Edward Jones team, we will determine the most successful approaches and products. Then, we will roll out solutions to clients through their network of 19,000 financial advisors across the nation.
Last Mile Education Fund
The Last Mile Education Fund offers a disruptive approach to increasing diversity in tech and engineering by addressing critical gaps in financial support for low-income, underrepresented college students. For the thousands of STEM graduates they sponsor, the final tuition payment, bridge dollars before the first job, or support in negotiating starting salaries and signing bonuses can be the difference between a successful career launch and early financial struggles.
Shur is partnering with Last Mile to offer its community an additional layer of protection through our platform and program of financial coaching and planning, credit-building products, and access to Student Loan Repayment Interruption Insurance. This ensures that their first career steps are matched with focused strategies and actions to build high credit scores, savings, and generational wealth.
Shur and Last Mile propose conducting an extensive data study on the national financial capability of STEM students of color. These graduates enter the workforce with valuable degrees in the hard sciences, engineering, and computer science. We seek to understand and describe to key national audiences how student loan balances, repayments, and credit scores affect their ability to make these degrees pay off over a lifetime for themselves and their families.
Over 3,000 Grant recipients & eligible to participate in Shur’s BETA platform. (New Grads and Current Professionals).
Future opportunity for Data/Analytics engagement.
Future access to corporate investors.
Who we are
Shur is the national authority on the complex financial lives and unique economic challenges of Professionals with Student Loans. Leveraging our team’s deep-rooted knowledge of fintech combined with the invaluable insights of our seasoned entrepreneurs, data analysts and insurance experts, our team is passionate about creating a unique financial services company to move millions of Student Loan Borrowers from debt to wealth creation.
Team
Kahlil Byrd
Founder & CEO
Arcineé Hermiston
Advisor – Credit, Banking, Risk
Travis Bunner
Chief of Data & Analytics
Nathan Kurtz
Head of Insurance | Director of Client Experience at Baldwin Risk Partners
Justin McAnaney
General Counsel | Partner, Scale LLP
Bart Holzer
CTO & CSO
Aurelia Crews
Partnerships Advisor
Scott Landheer
Creative Director, UI/UX
Tiffani Hutton
Director of Operations
Trey Fulmer
CFO | CEO Luca
Board of Directors
Kahlil Byrd (KB)
Margaret Richardson
Joshua S. Levine
Advisors
Michael Allegretti
Dr. Mark A. Brown
William Q. Derrough
Fernando Fabre
Cynthia Hamburger
Donald (Don) Kanak
Sarah Mims
David Stiffler
Join us
Request a demo to find out how your company, city or membership organization can partner with Shur to help your Student Loan Borrowers move from debt to wealth.