SoFi Brings Financial Wellness to the Small Business Workplace

Watch more: SoFi Teams With Paychex to Expand Financial Benefits for SMB Employees

SoFi is extending its reach into the office via a new partnership announced Thursday (July 17) with Paychex. The arrangement will let employees at hundreds of thousands of small and mid‑size companies tap SoFi’s discounted loans and one‑on‑one financial advice directly from their payroll portal.

Paychex said Thursday that SoFi at Work — an employee‑benefits program run by the San Francisco‑based digital bank — will debut inside Paychex Flex Perks, the online benefits marketplace in its cloud-based HR platform. With a single sign‑on, workers can shop for lower‑rate personal loans, refinance student debt, schedule a free 30‑minute call with a financial planner and use SoFi calculators that compare payoff strategies.

“There’s incredible alignment between what we’re both trying to accomplish,” Kelli Keough, executive vice president at SoFi, told PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster. “Paychex actually serves a part of the population that we often don’t get to — employees of smaller businesses.” According to Keough, who is SoFi’s Group Business Unit leader for Spend, Invest, Protect and Save, many of those firms “don’t have the opportunity to provide great benefit plans,” making the offer “often not accessible” without a middleman like Paychex.

Paychex, which processes paychecks for roughly 740,000 businesses, launched Flex Perks last summer and says more than 230,000 employees have already bought at least one add‑on benefit through the digital storefront. The curated catalog of benefits is free for employers. Staffers pay for extras such as pet insurance or identity‑theft protection through payroll deduction. The SoFi tie‑in adds what Paychex calls “enterprise‑level” financial‑wellness tools that smaller companies rarely source on their own.

Beyond Discounts

Keough said SoFi’s appeal goes beyond rate discounts. “We know that providing the financial education, the financial help, the planning is critical,” she said. The company will layer “educational tools, capabilities, digital experiences” and live consults on top of its loan products so that workers “get their financial life in order.”

Inside Flex Perks, employees will see how much they could save by refinancing a student loan or consolidating credit‑card balances and can apply without leaving the Paychex environment. “It’s seamlessly integrated into the platform that Paychex provides,” Keough said, calling the marketplace “a clearinghouse” for benefits that ride alongside payroll.

Early incentives target workers rather than bosses. SoFi is “providing discounts on personal loans, discounts on student‑loan refinance, principal deductions if you’re applying for an in‑school loan, as well as access to a range of different financial‑planning and digital tools,” Keough said.

Student‑loan relief is expected to draw traffic. According to the Education Data Initiative, the average student loan debt for Gen Xers is north of $44,000; Gen Z has a lighter load at $23,000. But, Keough said, the vision is broader.

“Most importantly, we’re trying to help employees with their holistic financial needs,” Keough said, citing credit‑card consolidation as one use case. “That’s why SoFi is a great partner for Paychex, because we can do that with a range of different solutions and not just through student lending.”

Paychex sees the offer as a way to stand out in a crowded payroll market, Keough said. The bundle “gives small businesses access to a range of benefits that they themselves often can’t go select.”

Performance Metrics

SoFi will track performance on several fronts, starting with “how many employers promote, how many employees actually log in and look at the services” and how many take out discounted loans or use educational content. The feedback loop “will definitely help us continue to expand the SoFi offering,” Keough said.

Keough said employees can enroll starting Aug. 6. Both firms expect interest to swell during open‑enrollment season this fall.

SoFi at Work, launched in 2016, markets tools that help workers manage debt, save for retirement and invest for the long haul. Employers offer the program to bolster retention and compete for talent without adding cash compensation.

For Paychex, which has long targeted firms with fewer than 50 employees, the arrangement pushes its marketplace beyond insurance and lifestyle perks into mainstream banking, an area that observers say is quickly becoming table stakes in employee‑benefit lineups. For SoFi, the deal opens an acquisition funnel for its broader banking products. While that isn’t the primary goal, exposure to Paychex workers “will also expose the employees to the full range of services that SoFi can offer,” Keough said. “Of course, we do hope that they will become lifelong members.”

The partnership arrives as employers scramble to keep staff happy in a tight labor market and as federal student‑loan payments resumed in April. A recent SoFi survey found that respondents rank becoming debt‑free and buying a home as their top financial milestones — both hinging on improved cash flow and credit profiles.