More than 100 corporations have partnered with Fidelity Investments in a program that enables employees’ student loan payments to qualify for their employers’ 401(k) matches, Bloomberg reported. The Secure 2.0 Act, passed in 2022, allows for such programs to exist.

Verizon is among the participating companies, along with Dow Inc., News Corp., and Liberty Mutual Insurance Co..

Bloomberg reported that employees frequently have to choose between paying off their student loans and saving for retirement. But with employers able to apply student loan payments toward 401(k) matches, the employees' savings rate can improve, especially if they can pay down their debt more aggressively.

Yet 64 percent of companies don’t plan to roll out an expanded 401(k) match, according to a survey by the Plan Sponsor Council of America, Bloomberg reported. They cite the costs of the program as a major reason In addition, a paper by the National Bureau of Economic Research, released in May, projected that while this benefit should help workers pay off their student loans quicker, it’s likely to have a minimal effect on retirement savings. Even the more generous 401(k) match programs—such as Verizon’s dollar-for-dollar match—are not close to the standard 10 to 20 percent recommendation for how much to put aside for retirement.

Still, the program can help some workers.

One of them is Christi Houchins, a vice president at Synchrony Financial. Last year, she decided to pause her 401(k) contributions so that she and her husband could pay down more of their combined $180,000 in student-loan debt after privately refinancing with a lower interest rate. When Synchrony began its expanded 401(k) match at the start of the year, their efforts to reduce their balance to $139,000—and ultimately, pay it off in full—could speed up.

“It felt like divine intervention when I saw that email,” Houchins told Bloomberg. “I felt like, ‘I’m going to be pausing for so many years towards my retirement and not being able to get the company match. What am I missing out on?’” The benefit, she says, “took that decision away, and I am not going to miss out.”