Student Loan Benefits: Employers Offer Matching 401(k) Contributions

Tracey Gannon, a senior advantages supervisor at ebay.com, claimed it was “type of a piece of cake” for the shopping firm to provide matching funds after the flow of the SECURE 2.0 Act. The law gave employers the capability to match worker contributions to specific pupil loan payments.

Employer Options for Student Loan Debt Aid

When it pertains to trainee finance debt aid, employers have two choices, Rinko described. They can either supply a straight repayment to pupil financing servicers to aid pay down employees’ loans, or they can choose to offer matching contributions in the 401(k) plans of employees that show they are making student loan repayments.

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Chris Rinko, a vice head of state at Fidelity Investments; Tes Fernandez, director of united state advantages for Applied Materials; Tracey Gannon, a senior benefits supervisor at eBay; and Marianne Lynch, an elderly supervisor of executive advantages and Hypercare for The Walt Disney Co., on June 30, 2025, talk about exactly how business can help employees with student loan financial debt throughout SHRM 2025 in San Diego, Calif
. Ginger Christ/Higher Ed Dive

Applied Materials’ Successful Program

In year one, the making firm added $2,000 per employee in straight settlement of workers’ trainee car loans. In the years that have adhered to, Applied Products now pays $4,800 per staff member and utilizes the advantage as both a way to sustain normally newer hires, current graduates and some underrepresented groups and as a recruiting device.

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The straight settlement method can be targeted to only relate to certain teams– those who earn much less or those in a certain job, for example– and can have a set end day, Rinko stated, while matching payments are linked to a firm’s general 401(k) plan offering and can not leave out any type of employees.

The business already budgets for all staff members to obtain the full matching payment in their retirement plans and has a 96% involvement rate, Gannon claimed. That suggested the brand-new offering wasn’t a large budget product for the business yet could offer assistance to some employees in demand.

SAN DIEGO– Applied Products’ student finance payment program for staff members gained such rewards that the business more than increased its yearly contribution after the very first year, Tes Fernandez, director of united state advantages for the firm stated throughout a panel discussion at the annual meeting for SHRM, previously called Culture for Human Resource Monitoring.

Disney’s ‘Easy Win’ with Matching Contributions

Likewise, providing a matching contribution appeared like “a very easy win” for The Walt Disney Co. and its employees, said Marianne Lynch, a senior manager of exec benefits and hypercare for the company.

“It’s a significant, significant benefit to reduce that concern” of trainee car loan financial obligation, Lynch claimed. At Disney, 97% of employees already obtain the complete 401(k) match, however, for those who don’t, it’s a way not to lose out on the matching funds to which they’re currently qualified, she added.

“They needed to go up to the CFO and request added millions of bucks to add this advantage. A year later on, they greater than increased the advantage amount, not because the CFO obtained charitable, however due to the fact that they were seeing the outcomes of the benefits,” Chris Rinko, VP and trainee financial debt and health and wellness advantages management account executive at Fidelity Investments, claimed during the panel, which he moderated.