Candidly Wins “Best Student Loan Management Platform” for Third Consecutive Year in 2025 FinTech Breakthrough Awards

New York, NY — March 19, 2025 — Candidly, the market’s only AI-driven student debt and savings optimization platform, today announced it has been named “Best Student Loan Management Platform” in the ninth annual FinTech Breakthrough Awards. This recognition marks Candidly’s third consecutive win in this category and fourth Fintech Breakthrough award overall, underscoring the company’s continued innovation and market leadership in products that address the most prevalent financial wellness challenges faced by the modern workforce.

By delivering solutions for planning and paying for college, repaying student loan debt, and building emergency and retirement savings, Candidly breaks through traditional workplace benefit models to enable significant impact for customers and end users alike. For example, employers who facilitate a student loan repayment contribution program through Candidly see a 58 percent reduction in likelihood of turnover among employees who receive the benefit, and end users who use Candidly to apply for a new federal repayment plan see their monthly student loan bill drop by $347 on average. 

“Receiving this prestigious recognition from FinTech Breakthrough Awards reinforces that Candidly is in a category of its own. We’ve pioneered a seamless user experience across the full lifecycle of education financing — from planning and paying for college to managing student debt and building wealth,” said Laurel Taylor, Founder and CEO of Candidly. “Our approach enables users to make simultaneous progress on seemingly competing financial priorities. Our vision is to deliver personalized, AI-driven guidance at each critical decision point, creating an ecosystem where debt repayment, emergency savings, and retirement contributions work in harmony rather than opposition. This integrated approach is why financial institutions, employers, and retirement providers increasingly recognize Candidly as the essential infrastructure for modern, actionable financial wellness.”

In a major advancement for the retirement industry, 2024 also marked the first year in which a SECURE Act 2.0 provision permitted employers to match workers’ student loan payments with retirement plan contributions — and organizations leveraging Candidly’s Student Loan Retirement Match solution saw a 13.5 percent increase in new retirement plan participants, and a 27 percent increase in the number of participants that maximize their employer’s match offering. 

The company’s continued impact comes at a time when workers are increasingly stressed about their finances — a pressing concern that is magnified by ongoing economic uncertainty and anticipated changes in the federal student debt landscape. 

“Employers are listening to the needs of their workforce,” Taylor shared. “Last year, we saw a 53 percent increase in the number of employers offering a Candidly benefit. Our customers and distribution partners are leading their industries into the new normal of workplace benefits, and their willingness to respond to real, urgent needs is being rewarded with incredible impact to business objectives, bottom lines, and to the wellbeing of their workforces.”

About Candidly
Candidly is an AI-driven student debt and savings optimization platform that addresses the full lifecycle of education expenses and empowers people to make simultaneous progress on paying down student debt and building wealth. Candidly partners with leading employers, financial institutions, and retirement services providers to embed its experience anywhere a user works, banks, or experiences financial services. Candidly is backed by leading venture capital and strategic investors including Altos Ventures, Breton Capital, Cercano Management, Impact Engine, Rethink Impact, Salesforce Ventures, Silicon Valley Bank, UBS, and Unum. For more information, visit www.getcandidly.com.

About FinTech Breakthrough
FinTech Breakthrough is an independent market intelligence organization that recognizes the top companies, technologies, and products in the global FinTech market. The FinTech Breakthrough Awards program is the premier awards platform founded to recognize FinTech innovators, leaders, and visionaries from around the world in a range of categories, including Digital Banking, Personal Finance, Lending, Payments, Investments, RegTech, InsurTech, and many more. The 2025 FinTech Breakthrough Award program attracted more than 4,500 nominations from across the globe.