Candidly Expands AI Guidance to All Consumer Debt

Candidly, a student debt and savings optimization provider, announced today the launch of a debt management guidance capability available to users of Cait, the firm’s conversational, multi-agent artificial intelligence assistant tool.

Cait launched in June 2025 as a tool to advise participants on strategies for paying down student debt. The new capability, expected to launch this month, will provide participants with guidance on all major forms of consumer debt, including credit card, mortgage, automotive loans and personal loans, in addition to student debt. Users of the tool will be able to either enter their debt information manually or via statement upload and:

• View their full array of debt, plus “health checks” such as debt-to-income and credit utilization ratios;
• Receive guidance on optimal payoff strategies, including highest-rate-first and smallest-balance-first methods;
• Learn what making extra payments could save and whether a balance transfer offer is worth the fee the transfer incurs; and
• Analyze whether paying down certain debt would yield a higher return than investing or saving.

Laurel Taylor, founder and CEO of Candidly, says plan sponsors have expressed to Candidly a need to provide their participants with “holistic guidance across both sides of the balance sheet.” While the firm launched in July several guidance capabilities on the “asset side,” including areas such as retirement and benefits intelligence, this launch is intended to address the liability end.

The new feature will “enable workers to optimize debt in the context of the benefits that are already available to them through their employers,” Taylor says. “How do I maximize my 401(k) match in the context of whopping [interest rates on] consumer debt”?

The average credit card interest rate was 24.96% as of September 7, according to Forbes Advisors.

Total U.S. household debt decreased to $18.8 trillion in the second quarter of the year, a 0.1% decrease from the first quarter, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s “Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit.” Mortgage balances declined by $74 billion in the second quarter, totaling $13.1 trillion at the end of June.

Meanwhile, home equity lines of credit balances rose by $13 billion over the quarter, totaling $459 billion, $142 billion above the low they hit in Q1 2022. Credit card balances rose by $21 billion and stood at $1.26 trillion, and auto loan balances grew by $28 billion to $1.71 trillion. Student loan balances decreased by $7 billion to $1.65 trillion.