Athena Cao

USA TODAY

Aetna employees with student debt are about to get up to a $10,000 break. The company announced Wednesday that it will help pay down their loans, joining a small group of pioneers that started the trend to attract and retain talent by tackling a widespread source of financial distress.

Starting in 2017, the health care giant’s 50,000 full-time employees will qualify for matching loan payments of up to $2,000 per year and a total of $10,000 per person. Part-timers also will benefit, with half of the cap. Employees need to have earned undergrad or graduate degrees from accredited institutions within the last three years.

“By helping ease their financial burden, our employees can better focus on our mission of building a healthier world,” said Mark Bertolini, chairman and CEO of Aetna.

Aetna is the latest to join the 3% to 4% of all U.S. companies that contribute to employees’ student debt payments, according to the Society for Human Resource Management. Other firms include Nvidia, a technology company based in the Silicon Valley, Memorial Hermann Health System in Texas and Natixis Global Asset Management in Boston.

The trend is poised to take off among industries facing heated competition for talent, such as finance, technology and retail, as 71% of college graduates this year carry student loan and the country has amassed $1.3 trillion of student debt, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York said in a May report.

Before Aetna, Fidelity and PricewaterhouseCoopers launched their own student loan matching programs. In September 2015, PwC offered to pay $1,200 a year, or a total of $10,000, per employee to alleviate the burden of student loans on the firm’s associates and senior associates with one to six years of working experience. That covers about 22,000 U.S. employees, 45% of its U.S. workforce.

The program is especially appealing to Millennials, who make up 80% of the PwC workforce, the company says.

“As a firm that recruits more than 11,000 new hires off campus each year, this is an opportunity to differentiate ourselves with a key talent group — Millennials — and provide a meaningful way to help reduce their debt,” said Tom Codd, vice chairman and U.S. human capital leader at the auditing and consulting company, in a press release announcing the program.

More than 6,300 PwC employees have enrolled in the program.

In January, Fidelity launched its student loan assistance program, providing employees who have more than six months of tenure $2,000 a year to pay off their student debt, up to $10,000 per person. Almost 6,000 employees have participated.

The program aligns with the asset management firm’s mission to help people save for the future, as student debt can delay employees’ next step in life, said Jennifer Hanson, head of associate experience and benefits. Fifty percent of people polled say they have held back buying a home because of student loans and 49% say they would delay engagement or marriage because of their debt, according to research by EdAssist, which will help Aetna implement the student loan matching program.

Student loan assistant programs generally come with hefty price tags. Fidelity already paid millions of dollars so its program participants will save $8.5 million in the long run, with compound interest. But Hanson said the opportunity to attract and retain top talent is worth it.

While the programs are attractive to Millennials, they aren't necessarily exclusive to younger workers. The Aetna program will also apply to employees who go back and get a new degree, said Kay Mooney vice president of employee benefits.

"We do believe a successful company does more than turning a profit," she said.