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Asset management firm to offer employees assistance with student loan payoff

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With an eye toward helping employees meet their retirement goals, Natixis Global Asset Management S.A. will soon join the small group of employers paying off their workers’ student loan debt.

Beginning in January, Boston-based Natixis will launch an employee benefit contributing up to $10,000 to full-time employees who have outstanding Federal Stafford and Perkins student loans, the asset management firm said Tuesday in a statement.

After five years of working for Natixis, workers with such student loans will be eligible for a $5,000 cash payment, followed by annual payments of $1,000 distributed over the next five years, according to the statement.

The first payout will be made in 2017, according to a company spokeswoman. She did not know how many of the firm’s 525 U.S. workers would be eligible.

The company said the decision to launch the benefit was borne from employee feedback, as well as its own research findings that show millennial workers are delaying saving for retirement because of heavy student debt.

According to the firm’s study of 1,000 U.S. investors conducted in August, 23% of all Americans and 35% of millennials who do not contribute to their company’s retirement plan said student loans keep them from participating.

Natixis’ announcement follows in the steps of New York-based PricewaterhouseCoopers L.L.C., which in September launched an employee benefit that it said may reduce its workers’ student loan obligations by up to $10,000 and shorten the payoff period by up to three years. The benefit will be available to about 22,000 PwC employees.

Increasingly, employers are looking for ways to alleviate financial stress among workers, though only 3% take the aggressive measure of paying off their workers’ student debt, according to the Society for Human Resource Management.

“In addition to hearing firsthand from our younger employees about the toll student debt can take on other financial obligations — such as saving for retirement — our extensive research on Americans’ financial health supports the need to provide student loan repayment as a benefit,” John Hailer, president and CEO of Natixis in the Americas and Asia, said in the statement.

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