While most workplace benefits platforms follow predictable patterns of features and pricing, the financial wellness space has seen innovation driven by two converging forces: legislative changes like SECURE 2.0 and advanced AI applications.
I recently met with Candidly’s executive team to understand their approach to this evolving market. The company has positioned itself as more than just another student loan benefit provider. They’ve built what they call an AI-driven platform that addresses the complete lifecycle of education expenses while enabling simultaneous progress on debt reduction and wealth building. Their recent announcement of Cait, their conversational AI assistant, and their work with SECURE 2.0 suggest they’re pushing beyond conventional solutions.
The SECURE 2.0 Act, which took effect last year, introduced significant changes to retirement savings regulations. The legislation allows employers to make matching contributions to employees’ 401(k) accounts based on their student loan payments, treating qualified student loan payments as equivalent to retirement plan contributions for the purpose of matching. This provision addresses the common dilemma faced by employees with student debt who cannot afford to contribute to their 401(k) and therefore miss out on employer matching. The legislation effectively enables workers to build retirement wealth while paying down educational debt.
The Student Debt Reality Check
But student debt is still a critical problem. More than 43 million Americans carry student debt totaling more than $1.7 trillion. What makes this particularly challenging for employers is that student debt doesn’t just affect recent graduates — it spans generations, with significant portions of Baby Boomers and Gen X workers still carrying education-related debt, often including Parent PLUS loans.
The resumption of federal student loan payments in 2023, combined with changing federal policies and the permanent extension of CARES Act provisions, has created both urgency and opportunity in the workplace benefits market. Employers are recognizing that traditional approaches to financial wellness miss the fundamental conflict many employees face: choosing between paying down debt and saving for retirement.
Competitive Landscape: Platforms Take Significantly Different Approaches
Candidly has several competitors, each with distinct strengths and limitations:
- SoFi at Work: Leverages its lending business to offer comprehensive financial services, including student loan refinancing, 529 plans, and retirement matching. Their strength lies in their banking infrastructure and broad financial products, but they’re primarily focused on refinancing solutions rather than optimizing existing federal loan programs.
- Summer: Specializes in federal program optimization, particularly Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF), with strong policy expertise and B-Corp certification. Their platform excels at navigating federal programs but has less breadth in private loan solutions and wealth-building features.
- Savi: Focuses on automated enrollment in federal repayment and forgiveness programs with partnerships through AARP and financial institutions. Their strength is in federal program navigation, though they offer limited employer-sponsored contribution capabilities.
- IonTuition: Provides basic loan management and employer contribution processing with over 15 years of experience in the space. While they offer fundamental loan tracking and payment processing, their platform lacks advanced AI capabilities and comprehensive financial planning tools.
- Tuition.io: Delivers education assistance benefits with coaching services and tuition reimbursement administration. They provide solid coaching support but have limited integration with retirement planning and AI-driven personalization.
- Fidelity: Offers student loan benefits as part of their broader retirement services, primarily for existing recordkeeping clients. Their integration with retirement plans is seamless, but student debt is a secondary focus rather than a core competency.
Technology Differentiators: Where AI Meets Financial Policy
Candidly has developed several innovations that distinguish its approach:
AI-powered personalization through Cait: Their conversational AI assistant contextualizes guidance based on individual loan portfolios, employer benefits and financial goals. Cait can analyze a user’s complete financial picture and recommend optimal strategies across debt repayment, savings and employer benefit utilization. The system learns from user interactions to provide increasingly personalized recommendations.
Vertically integrated SECURE 2.0 implementation: Rather than partnering with third parties, Candidly built its own infrastructure to handle student loan retirement matching. Their platform manages the entire workflow: loan verification, payment tracking, employer matching calculations, and integration with 401(k) recordkeepers. This vertical integration enables faster implementation and more reliable data tracking than competitors relying on external partnerships.
Comprehensive financial ecosystem: Candidly’s platform bridges multiple financial products — student loan optimization, 529 planning, emergency savings, tuition reimbursement and retirement matching, within a single experience. Their data aggregation capabilities allow users to see how decisions in one area impact their overall financial wellness, enabling more strategic decision-making than point solutions.
Who Benefits from AI-Driven Student Loan Platforms
Different organization types can leverage Candidly’s capabilities in distinct ways:
- Large Enterprises (5,000+ employees) with diverse workforces: Benefit from the AI personalization that scales individual guidance across large populations. The platform’s ability to handle complex benefit configurations and integrate with existing HR systems makes it viable for organizations with sophisticated benefits architectures.
- Healthcare systems and nonprofits: Particularly value the automated PSLF (Public Service Loan Forgiveness) processing and coaching services, which can significantly reduce administrative burden while helping employees access forgiveness programs. The platform’s ability to track and manage PSLF requirements provides measurable value for mission-driven organizations.
- Professional services firms: Leverage the platform’s approach to attract and retain talent in competitive markets. The student loan retirement matching feature helps address the common dilemma where highly educated employees must choose between debt payments and retirement savings.
- Financial services companies: Can integrate Candidly’s solutions into their existing employee benefits or offer them to clients through embedded partnerships. The platform’s API-first architecture enables flexible integration approaches.
- State and local governments: Benefit from specialized PSLF management and the ability to offer meaningful financial benefits within budget constraints. The platform’s focus on federal program optimization delivers high employee value with minimal employer cost.
Strategic Assessment: Market Position and Future Direction
Candidly occupies an interesting position in the financial wellness market. Unlike pure-play student loan companies that focus narrowly on debt optimization, or broad financial wellness platforms that treat student loans as one checkbox among many, they’ve built an ecosystem specifically designed around the interplay between education debt and wealth building.
Their recent $57 million in funding and partnerships with major financial institutions like UBS, Vanguard, and Empower suggest they’re successfully positioning themselves as enterprise-grade infrastructure rather than just another benefits vendor. The company’s focus on vertical integration, from data aggregation to payment processing to AI-driven guidance, creates both competitive advantages and potential risks.
The introduction of Cait represents a significant bet on AI’s role in financial guidance. If successful, it could establish new expectations for personalized financial benefits. The challenge will be maintaining the human touch that complex financial decisions often require while scaling AI-driven interactions.
Looking ahead, Candidly’s success will likely depend on their ability to maintain their technology edge while expanding distribution channels. Their partnership strategy with recordkeepers and benefits brokers suggests they understand that superior technology alone isn’t sufficient; they need to be where employers are already making benefits decisions.
The student loan benefits market is clearly evolving beyond simple debt tracking toward comprehensive financial wellness. Companies like Candidly are betting that the combination of legislative tailwinds, employer demand and AI capabilities will create opportunities for platforms that can bridge debt management and wealth building effectively.
For HR leaders evaluating student loan benefits, the key is whether to choose point solutions or strong platforms that can grow with changing employee needs and regulatory environments. Candidly’s approach suggests the market is moving toward the latter.
