Impact Report
2025
“The milestones we met this year underscore what we can achieve when we put innovation to work in service of real human outcomes.”
— Laurel Taylor, Founder and CEO @ Candidly
2025 retrospective
The student loan landscape has long been marked by twists and turns. And 2025 was no exception, with student loan borrowers facing yet another year of uncertainty and confusion.
Change of presidential administration
The year kicked off with a change of presidential administration — a turning point that sparked new questions about the future of the Department of Education (ED) and key student debt programs, and brought Biden-era initiatives for broad student loan forgiveness to an end.
Default collections and wage garnishment
In the spring, ED announced it would end the more than five-year pause on enforcing consequences for borrowers in default, including wage garnishment. Despite this announcement, ED continued delaying the resumption of wage garnishment before stating in December that it would begin in early 2026. Just weeks later in January, ED reversed course and announced the practice would remain suspended.
One Big Beautiful Bill
The One Big Beautiful Bill, which was passed on July 4, could fundamentally transform how Americans pay for college and repay student debt. Incoming changes, many of which will go into effect on July 1, 2026, include new borrowing limits and a massive restructuring of income-driven repayment plans. Notably, the bill also granted permanent Section 127 status for employer student loan repayment assistance.
The end of the SAVE Plan
The years-long legal battle against the SAVE Plan — which was launched in 2023 as a new, more affordable repayment option – reached the beginning of the end in December, when ED announced a proposed settlement in the legal challenges against SAVE. If approved, the proposed settlement will officially end the SAVE Plan.
As 2026 unfolds, our work has never been more relevant. Candidly is proud to continue our mission to bring financial wellness within reach — no matter what challenges student loan borrowers and their families face along the way.
By the numbers
$2.3 billion
Projected student debt dollar impact to date
$66 million
Projected additional retirement savings to date
252,000 years
Our impact
Introducing Cait™
41%
61%
71%
$32,800
Student debt solutions
Core platform
The all-in-one Core platform delivers robust, self-guided tools for student debt repayment and college planning, equipping employees with the resources they need to tackle their goals with confidence.
Federal Repayment
Plan Optimizer
Smart Payments
Student Loan
Refinancing Finder
Private Student
Loan Finder
$337
39%
33 months
$146 million
Coaching
When it comes to student debt repayment, every borrower’s best path forward is unique to their specific background and goals. Our Coaching service connects employees with Certified Student Loan Professionals who provide personalized, actionable guidance — all in one-on-one, virtual sessions that users can schedule right from within the Candidly platform.
And in 2025, we expanded our Coaching service beyond guidance for student debt repayment to cover the full spectrum of education financing, including planning and paying for college.
83%
9.7
$18,258
“I was feeling extremely overwhelmed, but after my session with my Coach, I feel like I have gained control of my finances again!”
– Alexis, Candidly user
“My Coach was fantastic at making me feel seen and heard — without judgment.”
– Lauren, Candidly user
– Nancy, Candidly user
“My Coach helped clear up my confusion and ease my anxieties about the One Big Beautiful Bill, SAVE forbearance, interest, and PSLF.”
– Willow, Candidly user
Community webinars
4,215
783
Q1
Clarity Amid Change: An Expert’s Guide to the Current Student Debt Landscape
Q2
529 and Beyond: Smart Financial Moves for Managing Loans and Planning Ahead
Q3
Ask the Experts: Planning & Paying for College
Q4
Balancing Act: Paying Down Student Debt While Building for the Future
Student Loan Employer Contributions
Student Loan Employer Contributions enable organizations to make a direct investment in their workforce’s financial wellbeing. And with flexible contribution structure and eligibility criteria, employers can offer a contribution benefit that helps employees tackle their monthly student debt payments — and even get ahead. 2025 also saw an important milestone for this benefit: the One Big Beautiful Bill granted permanent tax-free treatment under IRS Section 127 for up to $5,250 in annual employer student loan contributions.
$73 million
73%
4m10s
$58,124
61%
44%
Public Service Loan Forgiveness
Through the Department of Education’s Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program, borrowers can have remaining federal student debt discharged after they’ve made ten years’ worth of monthly payments while employed full-time in the non-profit or public service sectors. This program should be a great opportunity for borrowers to find relief and for employers to retain workers, but the reality of PSLF is that it is often difficult to navigate and administer — thus hindering engagement and impact.
Our smart solution for PSLF streamlines and digitizes the application submission process for employees, while simplifying the review process for employers.
52%
$62,275
$4,212
Student Loan Retirement Match
2025 saw continued adoption of our Student Loan Retirement Match solution, which operationalizes the SECURE Act 2.0 provision that enables employers to match workers’ student loan payments with tax-advantaged retirement plan contributions. By delivering the industry’s best-in-class — and first-to-market — Student Loan Retirement Match solution, Candidly is playing a critical role in transforming the financial trajectory for student loan borrowers, 8 in 10 of whom report that they prioritize student debt repayment over retirement savings.
Tuition Reimbursement
Educational assistance is one of today’s most-requested workplace perks — and our Tuition Reimbursement solution enables employers to meet this demand with a benefit offering that is optimized for Section 127 tax incentives, streamlines the request and approval workflow, and maximizes engagement.
$4,629
$2,086
$3.3 million
Emergency Savings
Only a third of Americans say they could afford an emergency expense in the next year — and when unexpected, urgent costs arise, that gap drives millions to take on credit card debt, dip into retirement and other long-term savings, and push goals like student debt repayment and homeownership even further out of reach.
Our Emergency Savings solution empowers employees to build healthy savings habits with automated contributions and payroll deduction plus tools for smart goalsetting, and gives employers the option to supercharge their offering with a sponsored contribution or match.
$62
$809
Customer spotlight
How Pearson made the case for robust student debt benefits
“The numbers took my breath away,” says Stacey Rodgers, Vice President of Global Benefits at Pearson. Her team discovered employees carried twice the student debt of average Americans — $130M total. Candidly’s data transformed a hunch into leadership buy-in, enabling immediate launch of student loan retirement matching that serves every generation.
Crossmedia’s Candidly offering is driving real participation – and real impact.
32%
Core platform
Student Loan Employer Contributions
Coaching
Montrose Memorial Hospital leverages an integrated approach to drive transformational outcomes.
$8.2M
Core platform
Student Loan Employer Contributions
Coaching
Public Service Loan Forgiveness
Gaudenzia is empowering its workforce to achieve a brighter financial future.
$24,461
Core platform
Student Loan Employer Contributions
Coaching
Public Service Loan Forgiveness
Business highlights
Expanding our reach
121%
111%
Laurel Taylor
Laurel Taylor
Introducing the Candidly Intelligence Center
The Candidly Intelligence Center is a sophisticated architecture that coordinates multiple AI agents — each specialized in distinct financial domains including student loan optimization, retirement planning, emergency savings, and benefits analysis. Unlike simplistic chatbots or “GPT wrappers” that apply generic language models to financial questions, the Candidly Intelligence Center combines this multi-agentic architecture with deterministic reasoning and real-time data integration to generate tailored financial insights. When paired with a conversational interface — like Cait, our Conversational AI Tool, or a partner’s own front-end experience — this technology delivers empathetic, personalized guidance at scale.
Featured in
Candidly at the World Economic Forum 2025
In an interview filmed on location in Davos, Switzerland for the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2025, Candidly CEO and Founder Laurel Taylor offered her insights on why AI-enabled, personalized digital experiences are essential to transforming financial wellness outcomes for the American workforce.
HR Leadership Summit
In June, we gathered some of today’s most forward-thinking workplace leaders for our inaugural HR Leadership Summit. The event’s agenda offered high-impact discussions on how AI is shaping the future of work, and how HR leaders can leverage this technology to augment human potential and drive workforce agility.
ForbesTV
In an interview with Forbes senior editor Maggie McGrath, Candidly CEO and Founder Laurel Taylor shared her founding story, discussed how policy changes are shaping the student loan benefits landscape, and offered a preview of how our new AI tools are democratizing access to personalized financial guidance.
Fintech Mavericks
Candidly CEO and Founder sat down with the hosts of the Fintech Mavericks podcast to discuss how Candidly has built a category-defining, AI-powered financial wellness platform that profitably serves the 99% struggling with student debt — proving that mission-driven companies with strong unit economics can tackle massive societal problems while delivering ROI to employers and changing lives at scale.
Making our mark
Life at Candidly
We’re remote-first by design, connection-driven by choice. Through regular gatherings and intentional collaboration, we’ve built a culture where togetherness transcends geography.
Scope of data
All data referenced in this report was retrieved from internal Candidly sources during the time period from December 2025 through January 2026.
Figures refer to total outcomes achieved between the date on which the relevant Candidly feature(s) were first made available to the applicable user population and the data retrieval date, unless a figure is noted as referring to outcomes achieved in 2025, in which case it refers to data from the 2025 calendar year.
Figures referencing changes in the number of employers offering Candidly or a specific Candidly feature compare data generated in 2025 to data generated prior to January 1, 2025.
Figures included in customer profiles refer to data collected from activated Candidly users that are employees of the featured employer organization. All other figures refer to data collected from all activated Candidly users.
Projected impact
Projected impact refers to the estimated dollar amount and/or years of repayment time saved throughout the repayment term for Candidly users’ connected student loans as the result of engagement with a Candidly feature(s). In cases where a specific Candidly platform feature is not noted, projected impact is the combined result of:
- Payments made and interest saved due to extra payments made with features on the Candidly platform (includes Round Up, Auto-Crush, and Giveback), and employer contributions (includes Student Loan Repayment Contributions and Employer Rewards)
- Interest saved due to private loan refinancing initiated through the Candidly platform
- Savings from users who enrolled in a new federal repayment plan using the Candidly platform
- Debt forgiveness granted to users who qualify for PSLF
Projected impact is based on certain expectations and assumptions, including but not limited to users continuing with their selected federal repayment plans or PSLF-eligible employment, continuing the same trends in their payment history, not defaulting on payments or entering into forbearance, and modestly increasing their income over time. Actual results for any individual user may vary.
Employee turnover
Likelihood of employee turnover is estimated by tracking user exclusions in employer-provided employee census data , then analyzing a comparison of employees who activated the relevant Candidly feature and those who did not.
Student Loan Retirement Match savings model
Additional savings generated through employer-matched student loan payments assume an 8% annual rate of return on savings, a 6% dollar-for-dollar employer match, and a $68,500 annual salary.
Participation, activation, and enrollment
A participating employee is a user that has completed the account sign-up process after being offered Candidly as a workplace benefit from their employer. Activation and enrollment refer to participating employees that have engaged with the relevant Candidly platform feature.
PSLF application history
Submissions received from first-time PSLF applicants refers to PSLF applications that were submitted through Candidly by users who had not previously submitted a PSLF application, whether through Candidly or through another channel (e.g. mailing an application to the Department of Education).
Coaching
After a user has completed a Coaching session, they are surveyed on how much more or less confident they feel about the topic(s) discussed with their Coach, and their satisfaction with their experience.
Average per-user projected student debt impact resulting from Coaching refers to the dollar amount saved throughout the repayment term for Candidly based on recommendations made by Coaches to participating users and the projected impact expectations and assumptions, and is inclusive of data generated between February 10, 2023 and December 31, 2025.
Cait
Cait user engagement statistics are based on first-party data from users who engaged with Cait through employer-sponsored benefits or paid marketing channels. Results reflect aggregated, anonymized interactions and outcomes across eligible users and time periods. Individual experiences and results may vary based on personal financial circumstances, loan details, and available options.
Average per-user student debt savings resulting from Cait’s guidance are derived from simulated user testing conducted in a controlled environment designed to replicate real-world borrower behaviors and demographics. Results reflect outcomes from over two million synthetic test scenarios and may not represent actual user experiences. Individual results will vary based on personal financial circumstances, loan details, and available repayment options.
Press Inquiries
Meera Oliva
meera.oliva@getcandidly.com