Student Loan Retirement Matching: Five Tips for Operationalizing (And Optimizing) Your Offering

Though less than a year has passed since the SECURE Act 2.0 provision that enables student loan retirement matching went into effect, early adopters are already reaping the rewards of offering this employee benefit — and other HR leaders are taking note.

If you’re considering introducing a student loan retirement match to your financial wellness benefit lineup, consider these five tips for operationalizing (and optimizing) your offering to maximize impact in 2025 and beyond. 

1. Get the 101 on the SECURE Act 2.0.

Student loan retirement matching is enabled by Section 110 of the SECURE Act 2.0, which passed at the end of 2022. In summary, the provision states that:

• As of January 1, 2024, employers are allowed to match employees’ payments towards federal and private student loans with contributions to their workplace-sponsored retirement plan. 
• Contributions are treated with the same tax benefits as certain other employer contributions and elective deferrals, and must follow the same terms (including the match rate, eligibility rules, and annual limits) as the employer’s traditional retirement match.
• Employees must self-certify their student loan payments with their employer in order to determine eligibility and facilitate match calculations.

2. Consider your budget. 

The introduction of a student loan retirement match benefit should drive a boost in first-time participation and encourage many existing participants to start saving more. After all, a quarter of employees who are eligible for, but not enrolled in their workplace’s retirement plan say their student debt is the reason they don’t participate, and 80 percent of borrowers say they’d save more for retirement if it weren’t for their student debt. 

So what does that mean for your budget? 

If your organization’s retirement match budget already allots funding for full enrollment and participation for its traditional match program (that is, every eligible employee elects a deferral amount that maxes out their match offering), introducing a student loan payment retirement match program will simply reallocate (but not increase) your budget, since student loan payments must be matched at the same rate as elective deferrals.

If your organization’s match budget assumes partial participation and less than the maximum deferral amount per participant, however, your total investment in a program that matches student loan payments might be greater than that of a program that only matches traditional deferrals. 

Understanding the prevalence of student debt among your employees can help you more accurately plan your budget for this offering — and Candidly offers services that can help you make this assessment.

3. Lean on Candidly to help administer your student loan retirement match.

When it comes to implementing and administering your student loan retirement match program, you’re not alone. Candidly is proud to help plan sponsors manage their student loan retirement match with the market’s leading solution, which features best-in-class benefits like:

• Direct integrations and preferred pricing through our partnerships with leading retirement recordkeepers
• Proprietary student loan data aggregation technology, which offers unparalleled coverage of loan servicers’ source-of-truth data 
• Standardized loan payment reports for easy match calculations
• A streamlined, seamless employee enrollment and onboarding process
• Seamless integration with additional, modular offerings through the Candidly financial wellness platform, including self-serve features and sponsored benefits for student loan optimization and repayment contributions, planning and paying for college, tuition reimbursement, and emergency savings

To learn more about how Candidly can help you, get in touch with our sales team.

4. Take a segmented approach to your communications strategy.

Like any new benefit offering, a strategic communications plan is key to a successful launch — and segmentation is key to a successful strategic communications plan. Look to your organization’s employee demographic data and engagement with existing benefit offerings to identify key groups that should receive tailored communications and engagement, such as:

• Employees in roles that require a college degree
• Employees that already participate in your retirement plan, but don’t maximize your match offering
• Employees that don’t participate in your retirement plan (remember: many non-participants feel sidelined by their student debt and may assume a retirement savings benefit isn’t “for” them)

Another critical opportunity for segmented engagement: employee resource groups (ERGs). Women, people of color, the LGBTQ+ community, young professionals, and employees approaching retirement age all face unique challenges when it comes to student loan debt, retirement readiness, and financial wellness, so tapping into your organization’s ERGs that represent these populations is a great way to drive participation from employees that are especially primed to benefit from your student loan retirement match. Consider giving a presentation about the offering at ERG meetings, distributing tailored content to ERG members, and asking ERG leaders to act as peer-to-peer advocates for the match from within their groups. 

5. Understand your financial wellness ecosystem.

How will your new student loan retirement match impact your organization’s broader financial wellness benefit ecosystem? Analyzing your new offering from a holistic perspective is critical to developing a strategic program design, forecasting a more accurate budget, and developing an effective engagement plan. 

Consider the following questions to understand how the student loan retirement match complements your existing program, and identify new opportunities for impact:

• How can you promote the student loan retirement match as an opportunity for greater optionality and flexibility? Participants can “double-up” on retirement savings by continuing their existing elective deferrals (if not already maxed out) and enrolling in the student loan retirement match, or leverage the student loan retirement match to free up cashflow for other financial goals in addition to saving for retirement and paying off student debt.
• How are you meeting employees’ needs for student loan support beyond the match? While your match enables simultaneous progress to retirement savings and student debt payoff, many employees could still benefit from solutions that help make monthly loan payments more manageable. 

Does your current financial wellness program support expanded participation? With added support for retirement savings, many employees will be in a position to redirect spending — and with the right benefit offerings, that spending can be guided towards other financial wellness goals. For example, tuition reimbursement can help cover the cost of going back to school to help employees avoid taking on more student debt, and solutions that help employees access 529 college savings plans give families a smarter way to save for their kids’ education, which working parents rank as their top financial goal.