AI, Student Debt & the 99%: Inside Candidly with Laurel Taylor

Welcome back to Fintech Mavericks 🎙️ This live episode goes inside one of the most urgent problems in America: student debt, and what it really takes to build infrastructure that can unlock wealth instead of killing it.Hosted by Nicole Casperson and Drew Glover, this conversation features Laurel Taylor, Founder & CEO of Candidly. Laurel is not just talking about student debt reform. She is building the pipes that could help tackle $1.8T in student loans, after raising $60M+ and partnering with giants like Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, Empower, Lincoln Financial Group, PNC, Schwab, and Vanguard.Fresh off the World Economic Forum’s roundtable at the London Stock Exchange, Laurel breaks down what it means to embed AI into some of the most risk-averse incumbents on earth, why Candidly built a deterministic AI engine for regulators and boards, and how their new Candidly Intelligence Center aims to serve the 99 percent in a profitable, scalable way. She also shares how her own student debt and her mom’s experience shaped the mission, why “margin drives the mission” for truly venture-backable impact, and why employers that partner with Candidly are seeing turnover drop by up to 76 percent.If you care about financial wellness as a core employee benefit, building AI your compliance team will actually trust, or proving that purpose-built fintech can scale with venture returns, this episode is packed with playbook-level insights.💡 Subscribe for weekly interviews with fintech founders, investors, and operators who move differently.🔥 New episodes every WEDNESDAY📲 Follow @fintechisfemme for behind-the-scenes clips + hot takesFollow the hosts:🔹 Nicole Casperson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicole-casperson-0820a5133🔹 Drew Glover: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drewbailerglover/