Candidly: Revolutionizing Student Loan Management and Financial Wellness

Student loan debt is a significant burden for millions of Americans, impacting their financial well-being and future opportunities. Innovative solutions are needed to help employees manage this debt effectively and achieve broader financial wellness. Candidly emerges as a comprehensive platform designed to address these challenges, offering a range of tools and services for employers, recordkeepers/advisors, and financial institutions.

Candidly's Holistic Approach to Financial Wellness

Candidly's platform offers a comprehensive approach to financial wellness, addressing various needs from student debt repayment to college savings and retirement planning. Their AI-driven solutions cater to employees at every stage of their financial journey, providing personalized guidance and support.

Shoring Up for a Rainy Day

Candidly helps users build financial stability with emergency savings solutions.

Planning and Saving for College

The platform offers tools to help workers save for college, find affordable private loan offers, and get reimbursed for educational expenses. These include:

529 Plan Finder: Helps users find the best 529 plans for their needs.
College Planning Tools: Provides resources for planning and saving for college.

Repaying Student Debt

Candidly provides self-serve repayment optimization tools, budget-friendly extra payments, and expert coaching services.

Building Savings

Candidly enables workers to build stability and security with solutions for emergency savings and SECURE 2.0-friendly student loan retirement matching.

How Candidly Works

Candidly's platform is designed to drive real impact for every employee, no matter where they are in their financial wellness journey. The platform offers flexible, comprehensive solutions that can be tailored to meet the specific goals, budget, and benefit ecosystem of any organization.

Benefits for Employers

Candidly helps employers gain a competitive edge by offering benefits that employees actually want, leading to a more loyal, productive, and engaged workforce.

Attract and Retain Top Talent: Stand out from the crowd by offering a benefit proven to positively impact retention. Employees who engage with Candidly’s core platform are 39% less likely to turn over.
Unlock Loyalty and Engagement: Show employees that you are committed to their financial well-being. Candidly users who receive student loan contributions from their employer are 73% less likely to turn over.
Drive Meaningful Impact: The all-in-one platform drives real impact for every employee, no matter where they are in their financial wellness journey. Switching to a new repayment plan with Candidly saves the average user $337 per month.

Benefits for Recordkeepers and Advisors

Candidly enables recordkeepers and advisors to reach new clients, supercharge ROI, and drive engagement from every participant population with a comprehensive, configurable offering. This includes a best-in-class solution for SECURE 2.0-friendly student loan retirement matching.

Benefits for Financial Institutions

Financial institutions can use Candidly to acquire, engage, and retain customers with service offerings that keep up with market demand by addressing an urgent and unmet need faced by 43 million Americans.

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Candidly's Impact

Candidly has generated significant impact for both employers and employees.

High Enrollment in Employer Contributions: 97% of employees with student debt enroll in employer contributions.
Increased Confidence: 83% of Candidly users feel more confident after completing a Coaching session.
Significant Financial Impact: Candidly has generated $2.3 billion in impact for its users to date.
Support for Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF): 61% of PSLF forms submitted through Candidly come from first-time applicants.

Success Stories

American Eagle Outfitters: Employees have shared their appreciation for the program, which is much more than they’ve historically seen with their other offerings.
Candidly Users: Many users express feeling more capable of managing their loans and seeing a light at the end of the tunnel.
Fred Finch Youth & Family Services: Sharing the impact they’ve created with Candidly, especially with the PSLF solution, is a powerful way to engage existing employees and to stand out in their recruitment efforts.

Comprehensive Solutions within the Candidly Platform

Candidly offers a range of flexible and comprehensive solutions to design a program that works for any organization.

Core Solutions

Federal Repayment Plan Optimizer: Helps users find the best federal repayment plan for their needs.
Student Loan Refinancing Finder: Helps users find the best student loan refinancing options.
Private Student Loan Finder: Assists users in finding affordable private student loan offers.
Smart Payments: Provides tools for making extra payments and optimizing repayment strategies.
529 Plan Finder: Helps users find the best 529 plans for their needs.
College Planning Tools: Provides resources for planning and saving for college.

Premium, Sponsored Student Debt Solutions

Student Loan Employer Contributions: Enables employers to offer direct support through flexible program design.
Coaching: Provides personalized guidance through one-on-one, online consultations with certified experts.
Public Service Loan Forgiveness: Offers an automated, digital approach to PSLF applications and tracking.

Solutions Beyond Student Debt

Student Loan Retirement Match: A seamless and SECURE 2.0-friendly solution.
Emergency Savings: Automated savings and sponsored contributions to supercharge financial resilience.
Tuition Reimbursement: Streamlined request and approval workflows, plus Section 127 balance tracking.

Tailoring Programs to Meet Specific Goals

Candidly offers flexible programs that can be tailored to meet specific organizational goals.

Goal: Support Highly Educated Employees: Program includes Candidly Core, Coaching, and Public Service Loan Forgiveness. This results in a 44% reduction in likelihood of turnover among employees that use their PSLF solution.
Goal: Take Section 127 Plan Further: Program includes Candidly Core, Tuition Reimbursement, and Student Loan Employer Contributions. This results in a 73% reduction in likelihood of turnover among employees that receive repayment contributions.
Goal: Maximize Plan Participation: Program includes Candidly Core, Coaching, and Student Loan Retirement Match. The average per-user projected student debt impact resulting from Coaching is $18,258.

Overcoming Obstacles and Achieving Impact

Candidly helps organizations overcome obstacles and achieve significant impact.

Obstacle: Inclusive Financial Wellness Benefits: Candidly helps break through to employees across every cohort and achieve record impact with historically high-turnover populations.
Obstacle: Diverse Employee Cohorts: Candidly helps implement a flexible, tiered program design that creates value for all employee cohorts without overextending budget or compromising ROI.
Obstacle: Improving Recruitment and Retention: Candidly helps deploy a holistic, inclusive program that drives impact for everyone and empowers them to achieve other financial goals.
Obstacle: Maintaining Competitive Edge: Candidly helps complement existing financial wellness offerings with a trusted and comprehensive student loan solution.

Employee Testimonials

Employees love Candidly because it provides them with the tools and support they need to manage their student loans effectively.

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Arielle: "My employer’s student loan contributions help take the pressure off. I’ve had to put things like saving for a house and focusing on my retirement fund on hold, but now I can see a future without student loan debt."
Brianna: "I felt like I’ve been paying off my loans forever, but now that I’m using Candidly, I can see that the end is near and I’ll be free from student debt soon!"
Crystal: "Having an expert take the time to walk me through the process and give me pointers for choosing the best offer gave me the confidence to actually take action, and because of that, I’m now saving over $500 a month."
Kate: "Candidly advocates for me by providing me tools to gain greater confidence and clarity about my student debt, and that empowers me to be a better advocate for myself, too."
Nydia: "Candidly gives me a clear picture of the reality of my student loans. Having all of that information in one place helps me make better decisions about not just my student debt, but also my day-to-day finances as a whole."
Jen: "Candidly helps me feel less overwhelmed."
Robinette: "I had $250,000 in student debt, and with the help of Candidly’s coaches, I was able to get that all forgiven. Student debt is really complicated . . . my coach shared strategies with me that I never would have thought of on my own."

Getting Started with Candidly

How Much Does It Cost?

As a member of The Milford Bank, users have exclusive access to the Candidly platform at no cost.

Is My Information Secure?

Candidly is committed to security and privacy. All information is protected with 256-bit encryption.

What Do I Need to Use Candidly?

To explore income-driven repayment plans or utilize tools to send extra payments to debt, users need to connect their student loans to the platform. If you don’t have student debt, you can still use the platform to contribute to the debt of a loved one using the Village.

Key Features

3.5 min: Average time to apply for a new repayment plan through the Core platform.
33 mo: Average projected repayment time saved with extra payments made through the Core platform.
$10,000: Average per-user projected student debt impact generated with extra payments made through the Core platform.

Candidly's Commitment to Success

Candidly provides a customer success program to guide users to success at every stage of their experience.

Exclusive Content: Users can find exclusive, expert-crafted educational content and resources embedded throughout the platform.
Dedicated User Support: A dedicated user support team delivers fast, friendly, tactical, and service assistance.

Managing Student Loans on the Candidly Platform

Candidly provides a user-friendly platform for managing student loans.

Understanding the Roll Up Dashboard

The Roll Up dashboard consolidates all student loan data in one place. Users can access it by selecting Menu > Roll Up from their Candidly dashboard. Each loan card represents a group of loans held by a single loan servicer. Clicking on a loan card reveals individual loan details such as loan type, amount paid, balance, interest rate, start date, and original balance.

Downloading a Loan Statement

Users are advised to download a loan statement from their servicer site prior to uploading their loan information in Candidly. This can be a recent billing statement, a loan verification document, or screenshots showing all required details from the loan servicer’s site.

Inputting Loan Information

If users are not currently required to make loan payments, they should input “$0” in the Monthly Payment field and “0%” in the Interest Rate field.

Uploading the Loan Statement

Users should upload the loan statement downloaded earlier from their loan servicer’s site. Candidly will review the upload if the loan is marked as the Primary loan account. A green "$" icon indicates successful verification.

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