Candidly, the category leader in financial wellness benefits, partners with leading employers, recordkeepers, and financial services providers to deliver solutions that bring financial wellness, security, and wealth within reach — for everyone.
For the average American, financial instability is the norm. Two in three workers live paycheck to paycheck, 43 million adults carry student loan debt (for which monthly payments average $400), and one in four have less than $1,000 in savings.
That’s where Candidly comes in. Candidly partners with leading employers, retirement recordkeepers, and financial services providers to deliver solutions that bring financial wellness, security, and wealth within reach — for everyone.
Founded in 2016, Candidly is today the leading provider of solutions for planning and paying for college, repaying student loan debt, and building emergency and retirement savings.
From self-guided tools that help users optimize their savings strategy and find lending offers, to solutions for sponsored workplace benefits like tax-advantaged tuition reimbursement and student loan repayment assistance, coaching services, and emergency savings programs, Candidly is committed to addressing the full lifecycle of financial wellness needs while maximizing ROI for our partners and their clients.
As part of that commitment, we’ve worked tirelessly to meet emerging needs — and new opportunities.
For example, Candidly was first to market with a solution to facilitate student loan retirement matching, launching nearly a year before the policy that provisions such programs — the SECURE Act 2.0 — was passed. By enabling the country’s leading recordkeepers to deliver a student loan retirement match product to their clients, 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.
When the Department of Education announced the end of the three and a half-year moratorium on federal student loan payments, Candidly readied its digital debt optimization experience and launched robust engagement campaigns to dramatically increase awareness and enrollment in income-driven repayment (IDR) plans and forgiveness programs. During this time, we saw a 9.3x increase in the number of users applying for IDR plans through our platform; under the plan most commonly selected by these users, the average required monthly payment was just $65.
And as ongoing economic twists and turns continue to underscore the fragility of the average American’s finances, Candidly is evolving to provide broader debt support. In fall of 2024, we launched Onward, a first-of-its-kind solution that leverages data and behavioral insights to offer users personalized strategies that can help them realize savings on all types of consumer debt — and then redirect that newly liberated cashflow into interest-bearing deposits. Initially available to our financial and retirement industry partners as an API-based solution that integrates seamlessly into the provider’s existing digital ecosystem, a front-end experience for Onward will be released in 2025.
