Industry Pioneer Eric Brickman Joins FutureFuel.io as Chief Operating Officer

Brickman brings decades of wealth management and employee benefits experience to help FutureFuel.io accelerate innovation and expansion into new categories

FutureFuel.io, a leading student loan repayment platform that helps borrowers pay down debt quickly and efficiently, today announced the appointment of Eric Brickman to the role of Chief Operating Officer. In this newly-created role, Brickman will oversee the company’s innovation roadmap and global business operations. Reporting into Brickman will be key business functions such as product, research, experience, data science, customer success, operations, digital solutions, engineering, finance and human resources. Brickman will also provide executive leadership and counsel as the company enters a phase of rapid growth including recruiting top talent, expanding and diversifying its product offerings and market verticals, as well as securing partnerships with leading financial institutions, employers and benefit providers.

“The FutureFuel.io team could not be more thrilled to welcome Eric to our team and benefit from his decades of experience launching and growing wealth management, retirement, and employee benefits businesses. Eric brings remarkable vision and business acumen, but I was most impressed by his passion for FutureFuel.io’s mission and his deep appreciation for the important role user-centric student debt management solutions can play in the lives of millions of Americans,” said Laurel Taylor, CEO and Founder of FutureFuel.io. “Eric’s depth and breadth of industry knowledge across the retail wealth management and institutional retirement and benefits sectors will help FutureFuel.io maintain its position as the most effective, impactful, and seamless solution for wealth managers, employers, benefits providers and partners that understand and value the relationship between student loan repayment and long-term financial health and want to bring a best-in-class ecosystem of solutions to market.”

FutureFuel.io offers the only comprehensive digital platform that provides student debt solutions that span from personalized evaluation of optimized repayment paths to performing paperless transactions associated with debt repayment. Brickman joins the company during a period of significant growth and momentum on the heels of a Series A1 round of equity funding backed by top-flight leaders in industry like UBS, Aflac Ventures, Fiserv and Salesforce. The FutureFuel.io team has grown 44% in the past 12 months, with 80% of new hires being female. In 2020, FutureFuel.io generated an estimated $22 million in savings for its population of users and the fintech/finhealth platform generated an estimated $16M of savings for its population in 1Q21 alone.

“Having worked with all aspects of wealth management and employer-sponsored benefits for nearly three decades, I was immediately impressed with the FutureFuel.io team and the work they are doing to address the student debt crisis and solidify loan repayment as a vital benefits vertical,” said Eric Brickman, Chief Operating Officer at FutureFuel.io. “Laurel is a force like no other, and her vision for the company, passion for the team and amazing work ethic are infectious. I could not pass up the opportunity to partner with Laurel in leading this company as we create the future of workplace-based financial solutions.”

Eric joins FutureFuel.io from Newport Group, a nationally recognized retirement and insurance services firm with nearly $300 billion in assets under administration, where he held numerous leadership roles over the past two decades, most recently as Executive Vice President and Chief Solutions Officer. In that role, Eric led the firm’s global solutions, innovation and technology organizations, oversaw business transformation initiatives and was responsible for their award-winning digital presence, user experience and market-facing retirement and benefits solutions for their more than 30,000+ benefit plans and 1.5 million participants. Prior to Newport, Eric spent a decade leading a series of strategic initiatives for Prudential Financial, with the most recent being the establishment of their financial advisory and global e-commerce businesses servicing their 40+ million client households. Eric received his bachelor’s degree in marketing and economics from Muhlenberg College, his master’s degree in business administration from Seton Hall University and completed Executive International Studies programs at Seton Hall University and Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management.

About FutureFuel.io

FutureFuel.io is a platform that supports America’s 45 million borrowers in paying off their student debt as quickly and efficiently as possible. On average, FutureFuel.io saves users between $15,000 to $40,000 and half a decade off of their student loan payments through a personalized Student Debt FinHealth platform that optimizes federal repayment plan enrollment, automates the management of unruly student loans, gamifies spare change, and enables users to discover free money from merchants while shopping online. FutureFuel.io's comprehensive platform crushes student debt by empowering users to take small actions that make a big impact.

FutureFuel.io offers four categories of debt-repayment solutions, across a range of non-integrated to integrated options (including API+widget powered experiences, SSO, and configured cobranded solutions): Benefit, Change, Crush, and Learn.

Benefit: FutureFuel.io administers employer student loan repayment as a tax-free employee benefit. Further, companies can allow employees to redeem internal rewards points and/or paid time off as cash towards their debt repayment. For plan sponsors offering a retirement match on behalf of employees’ paying down student debt, FutureFuel.io confirms the eligible population, evidences good standing, provides confirmation of the percentage of income directed to student debt, and calculates the matching contributions at an individual and aggregate level.

Change: Not just refinancing - FutureFuel.io guides cash-strapped users through the discovery, selection, and enrollment in federally-subsidized income driven repayment plans. The average user saves $260 per month by using FutureFuel.io’s Reassess tool and completes the process in 6 minutes or less.

Crush: FutureFuel.io leverages real-time budget analyses from users’ everyday spending habits to find spare dollars in users’ wallets to send to debt. Further, FutureFuel.io enables users to receive cash back when shopping online with 450+ mega merchants via its Chrome Extension. By reducing the friction to making loan prepayments, users get out of debt faster and pay less in interest.

Learn: Comprehensive debt management - tips and helpful information for getting out of both federal and private student loans faster and more cheaply!

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