New Sallie Mae office brings new jobs to Delaware

Less than four miles from its Stanton headquarters, Sallie Mae's new office space near New Castle is creating 300 new jobs, the company said Monday at a ribbon cutting ceremony.

The new office at 86 Christiana Road will be home to 500-plus jobs for the student loan company, which currently employs 900 people in Delaware. The company has offices in Indiana, Massachusetts, Utah and Virginia.

Sallie Mae moved its headquarters from Reston, Virginia, to an office building at 300 Continental Drive near Christiana Hospital in 2011. That move was backed by a $5.1 million DEDO grant that Sallie Mae used to renovate the building.

Sallie Mae, which reported $1.13 billion in revenue in 2017, invested $8.4 million to expand operations at Christiana Road. The investment included renovation, construction, technology and talent. The company was awarded a near $2.2 million grant from the state to help fund the expansion.

The taxpayer grant was intended for use to hire laid off Barclays and HSBC workers in the state, Sallie Mae said last year.

“Your decision to stay here is an incredible vote of confidence for us,” Gov. John Carney said Monday.

The newest office will accommodate credit, fraud prevention and collections departments. CEO Ray Quinlan said the average compensation for salary plus fringe benefits in the new building will be over $76,000 per person.

“The people in this facility have in some sense the most difficult job," Quinlan said, "to do good work, to have high quality, to do risk trade offs at a time when our customers would rather not talk to people to whom they owe money.”

Sallie Mae equipped the 57,000-square-foot space with 515 work stations, multiple conference and training rooms, a full-service cafeteria and a break room that includes an arcade. There's also a fitness center. More than 325 employees already work at the new facility and the company plans to add 285 more jobs by 2020.

"We are so excited about what the future means at a time when there aren’t enough great jobs for the people in our country looking for them," Sen. Chris Coons said. "Even though we’ve got low unemployment, we’ve got folks still out there who haven’t re-joined the workforce and haven’t found the better job they need and they deserve. That you’re investing this money in this place at this time to grow these jobs, we appreciate it and we are excited.”

Sallie Mae also announced a $50,000 contribution Monday to the Food Bank of Delaware, completing a two-year commitment of $100,000 for the Food Bank's Creating a Bold Future campaign to retrofit construction of a new headquarters.