Understanding and Tackling the Student Debt Crisis with Summer’s Will Sealy

Episode Overview

Will Sealy is the co-founder and CEO of Summer, a groundbreaking fintech company that specializes in helping borrowers manage and repay their student loans. With a career deeply rooted in financial policy and social entrepreneurship, Sealy has become a leading voice in the battle against the student loan crisis in the United States. His passion for creating impactful solutions is evident in Summer’s innovative approach, which leverages employer partnerships and government programs to alleviate the financial burden on millions of Americans. Under Sealy’s leadership, Summer has rapidly grown, now serving over a thousand employers and saving borrowers over $1.7 billion to date.

Before founding Summer, Sealy gained extensive experience working in both government and the private sector. He served as a special assistant and policy advisor to Senator Elizabeth Warren at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), where he played a key role in shaping student loan policy. His time in the Obama White House further honed his expertise in financial crises and consumer protection, providing him with a unique perspective on the systemic issues plaguing the student loan system. Sealy’s work at the CFPB and subsequent roles in the private sector, including his tenure at SoFi, solidified his commitment to addressing the student debt problem at its core.

Sealy’s dedication to social entrepreneurship extends beyond his professional achievements. Throughout his career, he has consistently sought out opportunities to make a difference, whether through creating safe ride programs in college to combat drunk driving or co-founding a young professionals board for the DC Central Kitchen, which provides employment opportunities for homeless individuals. His commitment to leveling the playing field for underserved communities is a driving force behind his work at Summer. As CEO, Sealy continues to push for innovative solutions that not only simplify the repayment process but also create pathways to financial freedom for those burdened by student debt.

Episode Transcript

Kevin Rosenqvist: Hey, welcome to Pay Pod, where we bring you conversations with the trailblazers shaping the future of payments and fintech. My name is Kevin Rosenqvist, and thanks for listening. Student loan debt is a huge problem in this country. Stating the obvious I know, but the depth of the problem is far more considerable than most people think. Will Sealy  and his company, Summer, are working hard to alleviate the problem by working with borrowers, as well as their employers, to find alternative repayment options and to ensure they are receiving any and all benefits that they are entitled to. We’ll spend time working in the white House during the Obama administration, worked with Elizabeth Warren, and has extensive experience managing the student debt crisis. He has a natural desire to help people, from creating safe ride programs in college, to curb drunk driving, to working on programs to combat homelessness. If anyone can find a way to fix or at least help the issue of student debt, it’s Will Sealy . By all accounts, you’re a pretty damn good guy. You’ve been part of groups that attack homelessness and hunger. You co-founded a young professionals board for the DC Central Kitchen, a social enterprise that has employed 1300 homeless men and women in the Washington, DC metropolitan area. Area. Now you’re the co-founder and CEO of Summer, a company that focuses on helping borrowers manage and repay their student loans more effectively. You seem to have a strong desire to help people. Where do you think that comes from?

Will Sealy : It’s a good question. I think in many ways. You know, I don’t actually I wish I could tell you there’s this one thread. I think it was just over the course of my childhood. I grew up in New York City and surrounded by people constantly of all walks of life. I’d get on the subway. I saw people in suits standing next to people begging for money, and I just. It was a stark reminder day in and day out, that the world is, you know, different for different people’s experiences. And, you know, you can choose to ignore it and just live in your own silo. Or you could choose to say, hey, I want to do something about it. Where did I get that moment where I was like, I want to make the world better for everyone and level that playing field, so everyone’s got a fair shot? Hard to say, but at least I know that at a young age, I just saw the contrast so quickly and so omnipresent in my life that I wanted to do something about it.

Kevin Rosenqvist: What was the first thing you tackled when you just said, you know what, I’m gonna do something about this.

Will Sealy : Yeah. So actually, I will say, when I was in college, I, a friend of mine was a writer, and he encouraged me to get into writing. He was at a different school, but like getting involved in the school paper, he encouraged me to do the same. He started becoming a news reporter, and I remember I had a little bit more of like an opinion that I wanted to start. You know, it was a tiny voice that I needed to build over time. I was very timidly stepping my toes into like column writing where you have an opinion. But I remember, like he wrote an article about like Facebook and including photographs on Facebook and how this was changing social dynamics and it was more like told in the news story. And then I remember I was like, I want to have an opinion on this. And I was like, this is changing social dynamics in real time. Like, what does this mean for friendships? And like how our lives will evolve with this like platform that’s going to document every single aspect of our social lives? And so that was where, like in college, I started to form my own voice simultaneously. I always felt that I was like on the other side of the pen and notepad where I was like, I was learning about interesting people, changing the world, doing interesting things, just even in my own community.

Will Sealy : And I was like commenting on them. And then I remember there was this one point in my college experience where, as a New Yorker, I was in Virginia in college, and there was an incidence of drunk driving on campus, in and around campus. And I had like really pissed me off. And I remember like, thinking like, why is everyone else not pissed off about this? And there were a lot of suburban kids who were like, hey, Will, this is a fact of life. Like, this is just what it is. And I was like, I’m from New York and we have subways. And maybe that’s, you know, like marred my judgment or made me more opposed to this, but like, this should not be the case. Like, we should not have students driving drunk in cars. And so I started telling all my friends and like writing columns about why I thought this was a problem and we should try to fix this as a community. But I did it in the perspective of a writer. Like a judgment perspective like this is bad. Someone should do something type perspective. And I remember a few of my friends sat me down and they’re like, hey, you’ve been complaining about this for months, why don’t you do something about it? And I remember pausing and being like, no one has challenged me on that.

Will Sealy : No one has ever said to me, like, why don’t you do something? And that was where it was like, turned on me and I was like, maybe I need to be on the other side of the pen and paper doing something. It was terrifying. Uh, and I remember thinking, I’m gonna fail, uh, and this is going to be disastrous. But then I was like, if I care so much, why can’t I can’t just keep judging and telling other people to do it. And I remember like in that time period, I was going around to like the student body president being like, why are you not tackling this problem? And they’re like, why are you telling me to? And I’d be like, well, who doesn’t if I do? And then eventually I came back to all those people a few months later and I was like, I’m starting a safe ride program to stop drunk driving on my college campus. And I think this is a noble cause. And a few years out of college, having built an entire safe ride program that had helped 15,000 people get safe rides to and from where the DUI rate over three years dropped precipitously because people had an alternative safe ride in a more suburban, rural community where, you know, there wasn’t really public transit, we gave them a safe, free alternative.

Will Sealy : I was like, I loved that experience, solving a social problem with an entrepreneurial solution. I want to do that again. But a few years later, the financial crisis hit and I was just pulled directly into that. And that’s how I found my way into government policy was like, I didn’t know what the social entrepreneurial solution was to a financial crisis. That sounded like way too big a problem to solve. But I ran into another community, in this case, national community problem, and said, I’ll figure it out along the way. And so I just chased after the problem again. And so I think that that evolution for me was like I was already predisposed to care. I don’t know where that comes from. I just did. But then why did I feel like I needed to do something about it? Well, I didn’t at first. It wasn’t until people started challenging me like, you care more than the average person, but you’re not. You’re just writing about it. Yeah. Why don’t you do something and that? That’s when I was like, , that’s what I want to do. I guess that’s what I really do want to do.

Kevin Rosenqvist: And when I started looking into what your company Summer does, the first thing I saw on your site were the words student loan and education assistance. Benefits simplified. And I immediately thought, there is nothing simple about student loans in this country. I would agree with that.

Will Sealy : We’re trying our best to change it.

Kevin Rosenqvist: But I saw your background and I was like,  well, if anybody can simplify it, it’s you. I have a lot of things I’d love to discuss, but we only have so much time, so I’m going to try to stay focused. You worked in the white House when President Obama was in office. You worked for Senator Elizabeth Warren, who was a big advocate for student loan forgiveness and broader higher education reform. You spent time as the student loan policy expert for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Knowing all of what you’ve seen, how broken is the student loan system?

Will Sealy : It’s very broken. It’s probably one of the more broken systems in America in terms of like a financial system where there’s a lot of money, a lot of people involved. I would liken a lot to our healthcare system. A lot of people are, you know, how why are why is medicine so expensive? Why is it so hard to get affordable access to healthcare? Why is the insurance process so complicated? Why is it so hard to see a specialist through a system like all of those types of, you know, human system based problems are also in the student loan world? It’s different obviously, than healthcare, but it’s you have $1.7 $7 trillion of student debt owed by 45 million Americans. And people oftentimes think these are students. They’re people in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, even 60s and 70s. The $1.7 trillion is such a big number, it doesn’t even. How do you even compute that? How do you. But I liken it it’s bigger than the entire economy of Australia. Just to put that into perspective. You know, if every single American, you know, contributed to this, this is almost 40, 40 to $50,000 per person across 45 million people. It’s 1 in 3 American adults that owes a student loan. And it’s even more if you think about how many people have debt in the household. So you might not have a loan in your name, but your spouse might or your child might. And obviously it doesn’t account for future student debt where you might take on loans for your children who are recently born or on their path to going to college. So.

Kevin Rosenqvist: So how did we get here?

Will Sealy : There’s a lot of ways that we get here, but a few sort of themes. The reason why student debt is a problem is because college costs have gone up precipitously over the last two decades, right?

Kevin Rosenqvist: Like, I graduated high school in 1997 and my college was a lot cheaper, right? Like even in-state tuition at my my eyes, like, bug out of my head when I read it. I can’t even believe it.

Will Sealy : Yeah. So I think there’s a, you know, you could read books and books and books on this just to kind of distill it down and through my lens. It’s college costs have been going up precipitously. We hear all about like the Ivy leagues or elite schools. But the reality is most Americans are going to state universities, community colleges. Those tuition prices have also gone up and up and up, certainly not at the same level, but they have. And so why are they going up? I mean, generally costs are going up across the board. We’re all very sensitive to inflation right now. But this has been an ongoing trend where college costs have outpaced inflation for decades. There’s kind of this college arms race where each college is trying to attract the next generation of students, and they’re spending a lot more money on administrators, marketing. And while we think of these institutions as private nonprofits, a lot of them are run like corporations, where, you know, they think of the degree as this product and the, you know, the student is the one paying them. And how do we get more students paying us more money? The way a corporation thinks about how do I get more customers paying me more money. And that’s kind of how these institutions have been run. And, you know, everyone’s like, I literally graduated in my college is already asking me for more money.

Will Sealy : And it’s like, so it’s not just tuition. It’s also through fundraising. The cost and sticker price has just gone up, you know, way faster than inflation. What that means is along the way there have been certain inflections on that which has been a multiplier. So the financial crisis of 2008, 2009, which is the event in my life that sucked me into the world of consumer finance. It’s why I joined the Obama campaign. It’s why I went to D.C. was like, I was graduating into this financial crisis where job markets are drying up, but we owe student loans. And it just didn’t seem fair. It’s like we’re on the hook to pay the bill of the thing that’s supposed to create job opportunities and career opportunities, and yet we still owe the bill, but we’re not going to get paid the salary that we thought we were going to get. That feels like a broken social promise. And so that’s what drew me in. I had student debt. My mom had student debt. It was I was already predisposed to be like hyper aware of this issue. But then when that event happened, it was like, this is an entire generation of people who feel like the race is they’re starting a mile back. And, you know, if you can’t get a job out of college, what does that mean for your longevity, of your ability to pay off that debt? And that just felt very, very broken to me.

Will Sealy : So I rushed into it to say, how can we make this a better system so that people could get more education? I was amazed that you could graduate from college without with, you know, with any degree you could get a degree in mathematics from the top universities in of the country and never be once taught. What interest rates mean. How a loan works. You know you can. You become a mathematician PhD, and no one ever is going to stop you in your tracks and be like, do you know what a loan is and how it works? Um, but you know, quantum physics, that’s good for you. Good for you. Good for you. Uh, you can figure out solar systems, but do you know how to pay off your loans? And I think that was like, that was just a, like I stopped in my in this process by saying what? What are just the basics. Like, why are we not even teaching the basics? So it felt like we were set up to fail. Like, here’s a huge loan to go better your life. Figure it out. Um. And you’re like, cool. Everyone else is doing this. I guess this is cool. Cool. You’re doing this, you’re doing this.

Kevin Rosenqvist: And you’re all doing it. Yeah, that sounds great. Yeah, I could do this.

Will Sealy : You’re doing this. We’re doing this, we’re doing this, we’re doing this.

Kevin Rosenqvist: I don’t have to pay this back for, like, four years. , I’m in, man. I’m in. Yeah.

Will Sealy : And so. So I’ll say, if you’re listening right now, as you know, you’re listening to the podcast and you’re like, sort of similar to your experience Hey, I all these kids whining about all this debt. I say, look at the numbers, do the do the research. The debt that is owed today is far greater than probably what you owed. And the experience of like the increase in salary from when you graduated to now on average, relative to the increase in debt load per individual is night and day. And so it’s not as easy as people think it was generations ago, a generation ago, even ten, 20 years ago, the costs have gone up precipitously. The dollar figures and the interest rates are exorbitant. A lot of people who had loans 20, 30 years ago, they’re paying two, three, 4% interest rates over the you know, millennials were paying 6 to 9% on a lot of these loans. Parent plus loans today are like eight, 9%. You know, you watch that interest grow for a loan. That’s three times the percentage of what people had 20, 30 years ago. It is actually back breaking. And so that’s why there’s so much anxiety around this I think it’s a real challenge.

Kevin Rosenqvist: Yeah. I remember when I, my student loan was very low interest rate and I didn’t really have to pay much per month, which was nice for me. I was like, I was like, , the system works, you know? And then when I started to make more money, I was like, , okay, well, I can, I can up how much I’m paying. And then I got it paid off and stuff like that at a reasonable amount of time. But I was also before the time when things got really out of hand as far as college costs especially. What always surprises me is when I see the in-state tuition, because that was when I was a kid in high school. It was like my parents were like, don’t go out of state. You know? We can’t afford it, you know, because there was a huge difference and there still is. But even in-state is crazy expensive.

Will Sealy : Yeah, I think I was going to finish this thread earlier, but I’ll just know, like in 2008 is when I said I got sucked into this. That was when state budget cuts happened across the country because of the crisis. Uh, politicians locally were like, we need to pay bills. We don’t have all the money. They cut state funding for higher ed. And that’s where you saw you know, college costs were going up in state across the country anyway, faster than anyone anticipated. And then there was this huge catalyzing increase in cost pushed to the family. You know, colleges without funding from the state were like, where’s this money coming from? Well, I guess we got to charge people more. And that’s when tuition jumps happened, not just in private institutions, but also public universities.

Kevin Rosenqvist: Do you think college should be free?

Will Sealy : It depends, I think. I’m a big advocate of some of the recent initiatives and calls for free community college. I think there should be free access to higher education. I do think that I’m a big proponent. I’m a capitalist, but I’m also a social capitalist. And what that means to me is if you have the funds to do so and you want to prioritize something, you should have access to privatized healthcare, privatized education. But I also think there should be a free public option in anything that I think is a basic human right. And I think access to healthcare and education is a basic human right, and I think we should recognize the level of care may be different, or the level of of the degree may be different, but people should still have access to something that is free in case they really are starting from nothing. And you’re giving them a leg up in a system that is certainly not well suited to help you get on your feet. We should give people a leg up and get them in, and if they do earn money and want to go back and get a degree that costs them money on top of the free education, well that’s awesome. That’s the system working. But that’s my view. That’s more, you know, a personal view on how the system could and should work.

Kevin Rosenqvist: Yeah, I think that really makes a lot of sense. And your analogy to healthcare makes a lot of sense too. I mean, the concept is very similar. What what about student loan forgiveness and that a lot of people are pushing for. Are you in favor of that as well?

Will Sealy : Yeah, I’d say this one is a super political hot button topic for obvious reasons.

Kevin Rosenqvist: I don’t want you to have to. I don’t want you to say anything. You don’t. You don’t want to say. No, I love talking.

Will Sealy : About it because here’s the thing I there are a lot of people who are who are charged ridiculously high interest rates, ridiculously high tuition costs. And there are a number of people who legitimately ran into issues in terms of life hitting them in the face and not having all the opportunities that they wanted or thought they’d have. And there are even instances of universities, a lot of them are for profit universities that have actually defrauded students and lied to them, saying, we’ll get you a job after you graduate. And like literally a a job contingent on, you know, graduating. They graduate. They don’t they’re not given the job promised, you know, exorbitant interest rates, even of 16% from some of these for profit schools. So there’s all these instances of people who played by the rules, did what they thought, and then just truly terrible crap happened to them. And I can I could put the facts together for anyone who’s skeptical, listening in and say, well, you know, that’s, you know, I could put it together and show you just how bad it is. If you’re willing to look at the details. I do think those people deserve debt cancellation. I do think that that’s critical. I think carte blanche, like carte blanche, like full mass forgiveness, I think, is a is a bit much because not everyone is in that bucket. So I think the best case scenario is targeted forgiveness for people who truly, we can articulate, have had been dealt really legitimately bad cards that have actually been scared or hurt in some way by a system that has failed them.

Will Sealy : I think that makes sense. But I think if it’s like you’re able to repay your loan, you can affordably do so. I don’t know that that makes sense. So I do think that President Biden has canceled about $150 billion of the $1.7 trillion of debt. So it’s a little it’s around 8% of of the student debt outstanding. And what he’s been doing is he’s been helping achieve programs that have been created under President Bush, President Clinton, that are assistance programs to help key populations in need. The primary programs that he’s been executing on are programs that were already in motion. They were already moving. People were already moving through them. And he’s taking credit for these programs working. And so I think there’s a lot of misinformation around what’s actually happening because it is legitimately confusing. But what’s happening is someone, you know, ten years ago signed up to work in the government or in the nonprofit sector, and they’ve been paying off their loans, and they enrolled in a program called Public Service Loan Forgiveness. And after ten years, you get all your federal loans canceled. That’s the promise. That’s what the program has said pay for ten years.

Will Sealy : But after ten years, you don’t owe anything anymore. And then that’s what’s canceled. So there are hundreds of thousands of people who went into the public sector, in the government, into government and into nonprofits where they’re lower paid But they have these degrees, they have this debt. And they were told that their, you know, these are military families. These are these are first responders, firefighters, police officers. They’re, you know, they’re not just, you know, working at your local nonprofit. They’re literally like medical professionals. And they were told if they went into the public sector and work for a nonprofit hospital or work for the government, that their debt would be canceled after ten years. And guess what? The program’s working. It’s doing what it said it would do. That program was actually created in 2007 before, you know, before President Bush, you know, finished his last year in office. And it was created then and it’s working. And so a lot of that 150 billion is, is people in these programs, finally, ten years later, getting the debt canceled that they had anticipated and wanted to do. And partly why I started summer was to make sure that every single person who’s eligible for that program, as well as many of the 100 plus federal and state loan assistance solutions that exist at the federal and state level that everyone knows about those programs and they’re getting into them successfully.

Will Sealy : So I’m excited that those programs exist. I think they should exist. Slf, which is the acronym I Tell people, is the best gift to recruit people into public service since FDR’s New Deal. Because if you’re graduating at 22 with $80,000 of debt, and you can get paid $30,000 in a government job or 50,000 in the private sector, what are you going to do? You’re going to go work in the private sector. Why wouldn’t you? You’d be crazy not to. It’s $80,000, and you might care about saving the world, but you’re going to be terrified that you can’t pay off that loan, right? And how could you blame that person? So if you’re told, though, that $80,000 is going to be canceled after ten years of working in the government, it’s a long time for a 22 year old. But you and I know ten years goes by fast. Too fast. So I’d say, you know, inevitably that person could wake up at 32, have no more debt and be, you know could choose to go to the private sector then or not. But hell, that person will have done ten years. Serving in an important role could be a nurse in an underserved community who gets their debt paid off. And and I think that’s worth it. And I think that’s a value add to society.

Kevin Rosenqvist: I agree. I have a three and a half year old. What’s college going to look like for for his generation? I mean, I mean, we’re.

Will Sealy : Seeing colleges now, so we’re seeing colleges now like Vanderbilt that are announcing that freshman year is $100,000 undergrad. This isn’t a graduate degree. That’s an undergraduate degree freshman year. And their.

Kevin Rosenqvist: Football team’s not even good.

Will Sealy : Right? I mean, you gotta I mean, they’re gonna have so much cash, though, after this new initiative. Yeah, I suppose you’re right.

Kevin Rosenqvist: You’re supposed to buy their.

Will Sealy : Way to the top. But. But I’ll say, you know, that’s $400,000 for those freshmen at a minimum. And look, not every school is Vanderbilt. And thankfully, there are many state schools out there that are far cheaper. But it is it is not going in the right direction, right? It’s only going up and was talking to Ron Lieber online with the New York Times columnist, money columnist. He’s written many books on the topic of higher ed and its costs. And I said, we’re going to see $600,000 degrees in our lifetime. And your three year old might actually see that at the age of 18. And it’s 15 years away. And so if you look at it, inflation adjusted or not, even inflation adjusted, just where will be then it will be, you know, very likely that we will see a $600,000 kind of core undergraduate degree. And I think that’s insane. And so another reason I started summer was to help parents like yourself get ahead of the problem. I’ve made a few analogies to healthcare because I really think understanding any complicated issue, it’s always helpful to have a framework of like, how are we solving this in another category? What can we learn from that and apply it here? And there’s a whole industry around preventative medicine. You know, we’re trying to solve diabetes, cancer, all of these illnesses.

Will Sealy : But if we’re not starting from a young age of, hey, sunscreen. Good idea. I know it’s annoying. It will help save you from skin cancer a lot cheaper and easier than having to deal with it in the ER and or intensive surgery, and it’s better for the system. It’s cheaper overall if every American does it and it’s better for you. So preventative medicine in student loans is helping parents make better decisions with their children from an early age around how to think about college. And while we don’t have all the answers, we can at least help you figure out what it is that you’re actually saving for. How much money will you need to save over your for the next 1015 years? What does it look like to enroll your son or daughter into a lower cost program that still has a great degree? How to think about student loans if they’re necessary as part of your funding plan? And then how do you make sure that you’re thinking through the next steps after your son or daughter is graduating and entering into repayment, you know, into making sure that you’re not overpaying on those loans. So you really have to look at this holistically and comprehensively. And that’s what we’re doing at summer. We’re really trying to get that end to end perspective.

Kevin Rosenqvist: Well, honestly, I’m just going to make sure that he knows how to play a sport really well and right, right, right, right. Yeah. I’ve already got him in swim class and t ball and right. And I’m gonna find one and.

Will Sealy : Get Vanderbilt to cover, you know, his football scholarship? Yeah.

Kevin Rosenqvist: There you go. $100,000 for freshman. I mean, my classes my freshman year were just kind of useless. I mean, they didn’t, you know, Gen Ed’s, they’re all Gen Ed’s. It wasn’t anything like.

Will Sealy : It’s crazy, right? So my my college roommate went on to go to med school. He’s an ER doctor now. He married another ER doctor when I was early in my journey of like thinking about student loans, how to fix it. He was like between my wife and I, and I was in his, you know, I was in his wedding and in the wedding party and I, you know, I remember he was like I got $570,000 of debt between the two of us. Obviously he’s chipped away at that. But a lot of money, as you imagine, over half $1 million of debt between him and his wife. And then they have three kids, you know, and and so I, you know, running the numbers. He might end up paying over $1.5 million across, you know, his three kids and his he and his wife’s education. And I know doctors make money, but holy cow. Like $1.5 million in education costs is actually truly insane. And in when people think, , it’s just a bunch of whiners student debt, I’m like, look at the numbers. It’s actually absurd.

Kevin Rosenqvist: Well, I think sometimes people are, you know, they’re just naive, obviously has a lot, you know, plays a lot into it. But also just like they’re just like, hey, you, you take out a loan, you pay it back. I paid mine off. I pay my debt off. So you have to pay your debt. I get that argument.

Will Sealy : I get the argument.

Kevin Rosenqvist: But I’m not saying I agree with it, but I mean, it’s just it’s more about not having all the facts to your point about those, those programs that that Biden has taken credit for. And and, you know, a lot of people out there are like, , the taxpayers, you know, blah, blah, blah. It’s like, well, no, that’s that’s that was in place already.

Will Sealy : I was talking to someone recently about this exact issue and I noted, like, look at home insurance totally skyrocketing in price. It’s like doubled in price in the last three years on average across the country. And there are a lot of places, because of changing climates and extreme weather, that you literally can’t get home insurance and people are just rolling the dice, praying to God that their house isn’t leveled by a storm and literally have no insurance to back it up. If they do. And then it’s harder to get a mortgage if you can’t get insurance. And like that’s almost impossible. So like it’s if you were like, , come on, stop whining about home insurance, I’d be like, have you looked recently at this at how it is like maybe ten years ago, 15 years ago, it’d be like, , it’s a rounding error. It’s getting different and it’s changed. And so I think the same is true in student loans. It’s changed a lot in the last ten, 20 years. Enough so that if you went through the experience yourself earlier on, it’s just different today.

Kevin Rosenqvist: So let’s let’s talk about summer. And so let’s say someone comes, you know, comes out of college. They’re let’s say they’re 22, 23 years old. They’re they need to start repaying. Do they do they come to you right away and you guys help. Tell me about the process. Yeah.

Will Sealy : So one of the reasons we’re on the show is we were a cutting edge fintech solution in the student loan space. Really thinking about how the next generation is paying for this major expense in their life. That’s either the most expensive thing in their life or or, you know, second, after rent and mortgage. And also helping parents navigate it on the front end, as I noted earlier. So, you know, we have a b2b2c solution. So businesses are coming to us saying we’re trying to recruit the next generation. We also have a bunch of parents on our staff that are struggling with this. And our top company challenge is retaining employees and attracting and recruiting the next generation. And we’re talking about our 401 K benefits. And they’re not resonating. A 22 year old with 80 K of debt is not thinking about what happens at 65. They’re thinking about what happens next week when my thousand dollar student loan bill comes due. And so the needs of the workforce are evolving rapidly coming out of the pandemic. Hr leaders are being treated more seriously than by their C-suite executive peers. We’re talking to a lot of Chros who are like, I was talking about strategic priorities and KPI alignment for years, and people were like, yeah, yeah, yeah, like HR, thanks for your work. You know, appreciate you. We’re at the big kids table over here. Yeah, yeah.

Kevin Rosenqvist: Go go work on payroll.

Will Sealy : Hard work of building the future of this company. You know, thank you for everything you’re doing. And and I think what happened was the pandemic hit, and suddenly C-suite executives were like, wait a second. Culture matters. Workplace happiness. What’s quiet? Quitting. What’s that about? Um, and and I think for this is right now, HR leaders are seeing an incredible sort of recognition that they’re critical. They need a seat at the big kids table. They actually need to be fully aligned with the business strategy, because if you can’t retain your employees and keep them happy, productive and focused, guess what? I don’t care how great your KPIs look, you’re not going to hit them. And so HR leaders have this new resolve to align strategic business initiatives with the workplace. And all of these things are happening in real time, where Gen Z is graduating with a ton of student debt. Millennials guess what? They had more student debt than than boomers and certainly Gen X, and now they have their kids college costs popping up on their horizon as well. They’re doubly hit. And guess what? Gen X and boomers are actually contributing now to their children’s and their grandchildren’s college education. So people over the age of 50 are the fastest growing population of student loan borrowers.

Will Sealy : They’re getting sucked in. So for anyone who is like, well, you know, college was so much cheaper for me. We’ve referenced you now ten times. We’ll stop picking on you. But. But you’re probably feeling the heat now, because guess what? Your son is telling you that your granddaughter, you know, needs help with her college fund, and so you’re getting pulled in one way or another to this problem, whether or not you even believe in it or care about it. You have to now because your family is pulling you in. And so HR leaders are now coming to us saying, help us, help us solve this new financial challenge in the workplace, and we want to do something about it. So they’re coming to us. We’re launching it in their benefits portal. Employees can come in. If you’re a parent, we’ll navigate you through your, you know, your college cost projections help you come up with a plan. 529 Savings Plan using tax advantaged programs to save money and set aside that money that you’ll need for the college fund. If you’re a borrower and you have student debt, will enroll you in these government loan assistance programs if you work for the nonprofit I mentioned earlier.

Will Sealy : Great program with public service loan forgiveness. But you work in a private sector and we work with a ton of private sector employers will help you enroll in programs like the new Save plan created under the the Biden administration, which will, on average, reduce people’s student loan payments by $300 a month, saving them almost $4,000 a year. And they will subsidize your payments based on your income. And when you’re in your 20s and 30s, it’s the earliest part of your career, you’re likely earning less, and your debt is at the highest level. So you have the biggest shot at saving money under that program, which is an income driven repayment plan offered by the government. And we will enroll you into it and ensure your re-enrolled year over year. And we can do a whole slew of other things with state loan assistance programs. Look at whether your private loans qualify for refinancing and lower the interest rates of those loans. And we have other tools and resources to guide you through it. With access to certified financial planners who can help you navigate and answer your questions around what’s you know, what’s the right decision for you?

Kevin Rosenqvist: That’s awesome. It’s very, very all inclusive. And I the partnerships with employers, I think is really intriguing because you’re it gives an easier way for people to use your platform. Yep.

Will Sealy : Um, it’s free for the employee. And we never want when you’re in debt or you’re struggling with money, we never want there to be a financial barrier for you to get the help you need. Whereas employers love being able to, you know, look great to their employees, you know, and so they are like, hey, they’re the value prop for the employer is, , you’re telling me that summer, like, I don’t have to pay for the loans per se. And we do have a number of employers who do pay down the debt with, you know, hundreds of dollars of payments per month. We have another whole class of employers that are like, you’re telling me that I can just better get my employees into these confusing government programs, but you’ll do the work. You’ll make sure they get through it successfully. Um, and I don’t have to pay off their loans to do that. They’re like, that’s awesome. Yeah, let’s sign. Sign us up for that. Yeah.

Kevin Rosenqvist: Talk about a value add for employers to bring on young talent.

Will Sealy : Yeah exactly. And they put it as part of their recruiting strategy. It’s now become part of the retention strategy. We’ve seen through case studies a 20% reduction in turnover from people utilizing our services in the employers that have signed up for summer and for them. You know, that’s a 3 or 4 x ROI on their investment in summer because they save so much money in a reduction of turnover cost when an employee leaves. It often takes 3 to 6 months to replace. And that’s time spent recruiting searching opportunity cost. And it can be as much as the cost of that person’s salary to refill that role. And so every person that we help retain because they’re more financially secure, we’ve removed this stress for them. And then there’s a multiplier effect for any employer paying down the loans of the employee as well, where they get even more retention benefits. It’s just it’s a no brainer.

Kevin Rosenqvist: What does the future hold for summer? Do you guys have other ideas in place to try to keep continuing to attack this problem?

Will Sealy : Yeah, I mean, one of the coolest initiatives we’re working on right now is we just launched a partnership with ADP. They’ve grown to a million employers that they serve, and they have several hundred thousand that utilize them for 401 K retirement plans. Just recently, a law change has allowed for an employer that wants to match a employees student loan payment and make a commensurate payment to their 401 K, so you’re paying $300 to your student loan. Your employer says we’ll put 300 to your 401 K. They can do that tax advantaged as part of the 401 K plan, and that there was a law change that happened there. The argument being people in their 20s stand to save the most over their career from compound growth, from every dollar they put into their retirement plan in the beginning of their career. That’s where compound growth is your friend, not your enemy. Like with loan interest, it’s like, let’s keep compounding those savings. But the problem is that many people in their 20s, again, 70% of people graduating with student debt are like, no way am I putting money into my 401 K. I got to pay off my debt. I got to dig out of the hole before I can start seeing.

Kevin Rosenqvist: I had to. I had to think I was in my 30s before I started contributing to A401K yeah. So, you.

Will Sealy : Know, you might have left a few hundred thousand dollars on the table not to rub it in. I’ve been there, I’ve been there.

Kevin Rosenqvist: Well, sorry.

Will Sealy : You might you know, had you had had this option had your employer at the time been like, hey, don’t worry about keep paying your student loan will contribute to your 401 K. You might have been like, great, then you’re saving. Everyone wins. The employer is like our employees are utilizing the program we created to help them. That’s good. The record keeper, the 401 K providers like more assets under management. We have more people participating in their retirement. That’s great. We’re winning. And then summer is obviously helping facilitate getting people into this program, getting them successfully enrolled, and ensuring that all of the data is being sent and filed compliantly and correctly. That’s our value add. So when you said, what’s the future? I think this is the one of the most exciting things happening at summer is, you know, we’re using all these free government programs to help people save money on their debt, helping them pay it off faster. That’s the goal. And helping the government, you know, pay off more of it when they’re entitled and eligible for it. But in addition to that, we also have real understanding of all the links between what I call almost the domino effect of student debt. If you’re paying this big bill every month, what are you not doing in your 20s and 30s that prior generations did? Buying a home, potentially buying a car, right. You know, having kids, getting married, having kids, like people are delaying having kids and getting married. There’s so many reasons why. But guess what? You find out that your girlfriend has $200,000 of student debt. Maybe you’re not popping the question as quickly as you might have. And she not had $200,000 in debt.

Kevin Rosenqvist: Or maybe I need to see your portfolio. I need to yeah.

Will Sealy : I mean, it happens, like, I, I’m literally out at bars in, in Brooklyn and I’ll hear, like, the table next to me and they’re like, you know, I’m just I really want to propose, but  my God, that we both have so much student debt. And I’m like, it’s real. Like, these are real people’s lives. They’re making decisions around the like the zeros and ones that are hanging over them. And no other generation had to deal with that, you know? And so we don’t really know the long term impacts. But what we do know is people are less likely to have, you know, they’re like one kid is fine, one kid.

Kevin Rosenqvist: That’s what we did, you know? Yeah. Right.

Will Sealy : And we’ll do one kid, you know, it’s like you might have done two kids and, you know, you had more money, you know, and it would have been less overhead and fewer costs. So, you know, all of these things are interconnected. And so we’re helping employers realize that we’re helping employees realize that. And we’re trying to make it a more manageable problem with a plan to help people get out of the debt. And we’ve saved $1.7 billion cumulatively for the hundreds of thousands of employees we’ve helped. To date, and we’re currently we just passed our 1,000th employer that we now support. And so we’ve been on this rampage recently to just get every employer aware there are options there, solutions. You can look good for your employees. You can obtain them. It’s an ROI play. It’s a strategic initiative that aligns with your company goals. It’s just a win win win.

Kevin Rosenqvist: I agree. Well, if there’s any there’s undoubtedly some people out there who this might help. What’s the best way to get on board?

Will Sealy : Yeah, I mean you can look us up. Meet summer. Com meet summer.com. Look us up. Uh, send us an email. You know, we’d be happy to assess the student debt in the workforce. You know, I will say a lot of employers say, well, we don’t know how much student debt is in our workforce. I could say the average. We see this over and over again across every employer we talk to, about 35, 40% of employees will owe a loan in their name, closer to 50% will owe a loan within the household to a spouse or a loved one and contribute part of their income to it. And then another 30% on average are have kids. They’re thinking about the college fund. How am I going to pay for this kid? 17 it’s happening next year. Kids are one think in the long term around college savings funds. Um, and they’re on their journey. So about 80% of employees on average are touched by this issue. Um, and we’re out there making sure every single one of them has a plan.

Kevin Rosenqvist: I’m going to keep my kid in t ball, see what happens. Yeah.

Will Sealy : No, it’ll work, I promise. No, I know I can’t make a promise. I can’t make that promise. But I really hope it does work out.

Kevin Rosenqvist: We’ll see. Thanks for being here. It was great talking to you.

Will Sealy : Awesome. Really enjoyed it.