5 Things to Look for in an HSA Administrator

When evaluating health savings account (HSA) providers to administer your employer-sponsored HSA plan, you should look for benefits and features that will have a positive impact on your business and employees.

But by looking for a few specific qualities in your HSA administrator, you can narrow your search to a much smaller number of potential options. In this article, we’ll outline the five key qualities to look for in your HSA administrator.

1. A mindset grounded in partnership

An HSA is more than just a bank account. It’s a way to improve your employees’ financial wellness – both as a means to pay for healthcare expenses today but also to save for unexpected costs tomorrow, and even into retirement. Your HSA administrator should assist you in building a plan that will help you achieve your strategic goals and objectives each year.

Your employees deserve partnership too. You offer benefits to your employees to reward their hard work and dedication. It’s crucial for you to find a partner—not just an HSA  administrator—who will take care of your employees the way you do.

Ways your HSA administrator can act as a partner to you and your employees:

Team. Having a team is great, but it matters who will be answering calls and returning emails. HSAs can be complicated, and it’s important to get the right answer the first time and every time. That’s why the support should be delivered by people specifically trained on the products and services they are providing. Ask who staffs the team – is it their own employees or outsourced? You should also ask about the training the team receives at time of hire and on-going. Finally, be sure to ask about the customer service metrics the administrator tracks including call abandon rate, speed of answer, and first call resolution statistics.

Response. When an urgent issue arises, it’s important to know that someone is available to answer a question or address the problem. Ask potential HSA administrators about hours of operation as well as the average turnaround time to answer calls, return voicemails and respond to emails or other queries.

Education. Your employees can’t improve their financial wellness if they don’t enroll or don’t know how to use their accounts. Your HSA administrator should be able to provide tools, resources and educational materials to help empower employees in every stage of their enrollment. Ideally, the administrator will have resources on different subjects and varying formats to educate employees and their families.

Compliance. The legal and regulatory environment for employee benefits changes all the time. How can you keep up? Partner with an administrator committed to compliance that will provide proactive communications when your plan is affected by changes and provides resources to help you when you have questions. Ask potential partners how they stay up-to-date and what resources are available to you if you partner with them.

2. Convenient and efficient plan administration

Human Resource and Benefits teams are busier than ever. From an administrative perspective, you’ll want to look for an HSA program that offers the tools and resources your team needs to maximize your efficiency.

Common offerings to look for include:

• Defined implementation and onboarding process
• Online portal for plan management
• Data integration with your human resources information system (HRIS), benefits administration, payroll, and/or other system(s) to automate adds, changes and deletes
• Flexible options for contributing funds to employees’ accounts
• Automated notifications to alert you when action is needed
• Timely reports with the information you need when you need it
• Analytics to provide the insights you need for strategic benefits planning

Health savings accounts aren’t just an add-on to an existing plan. They’re a unique and powerful plan for helping your employees build wealth and better afford the cost of their healthcare. Because of this, you should always choose an administrator that simplifies the employee experience and encourages engagement.

Technology features that employees want:

• Online portal for 24/7/365 access to check balances, view transactions, make contributions, and complete transactions
• Integrated investment feature in the same portal where they manage their HSA
• Convenient mobile app for access on the go
• Decision support tools to help with enrollment
• Tools & resources to help optimize their accounts
• Configurable notifications to alert employees to account activity and required tasks
• Don’t choose an administrator without seeing a demonstration of their capabilities and learning about the features they have available to streamline plan administration for you and your employees.

3. Best-in-class HSA plan features

If you want your HSA to attract, retain and reward employees, you will need an administrator that can offer all the features employees deserve. These features will also be critical to driving the financial wellness results you want for your population.

Maximizing their accounts. The features employees will likely want most are features that will allow them to maximize the balance in their accounts. An HSA administrator can help employees increase their balances without increasing their contributions by offering competitive interest rates on cash balances. Another way to potentially grow balances without employees having to add additional funds is investing. Your preferred HSA administrator should offer a selection of highly-rated, low cost investment options along with decision support tools to help employees evaluate risk and select investments. Interest and investment earnings are received tax-free in an HSA and can be a great way to increase savings.

Ease of use. Employees will also value flexible plan management options. Each employee should be able to manage their account in the way(s) they are most comfortable or find most convenient. This means offering a range of options including in person, online, mobile app, phone, email, fax, mail, etc.

Reimbursement options. Flexibility in how employees can access their funds is also important. Debit cards are great when needing to pay an expense in person at the point of service, for example, paying for a prescription at the pharmacy. Debit card information can also be entered online or submitted to a provider to pay an out-of-pocket expense. For expenses that an employee has already paid that they want to reimburse from their plan, ATM access and direct deposit availability can make paying themselves back quick and easy. And, if employees want to pay their provider directly from their account, online bill pay is a great option. Giving employees a range of options for accessing their funds means that employees will have access to their money how and when they need it.

Savings opportunities. Employees may also appreciate features that allow them to save money on healthcare expenses beyond the tax savings they already enjoy. Some administrators can offer access to exclusive discounts on eligible healthcare expenses to help the money in employees’ accounts stretch even further.

4. Actionable insights for strategic planning

To make informed benefit decisions, you need data. You should partner with an HSA administrator who can identify trends and deliver actionable insights you can use to evaluate your current offering and create a strategy for the future.

How can HSA plan insights help?

Health plan changes. When evaluating new plan designs, it will be important to consider the possible impact to employees of any change. In order to control health insurance costs, many employers are considering higher deductibles. As health plan deductibles rise, it would be helpful for your team to know how prepared your employees are to cover higher out-of-pocket expenses they may experience.

Educational needs. Analytics can help you determine whether employees understand their HSAs based on their engagement and utilization trends. These insights can help you decide where to focus your efforts to drive the greatest improvement in understanding and engagement. And, after any initiatives your team completes, you can compare the data from before the initiative to the data from after the initiative to determine whether your actions were effective.

Market intelligence. In the contest for talent, it is critical that you offer competitive benefits to help you attract and retain employees. Using data analytics, you understand how your HSA plan offering stacks up against similar companies so you can remain competitive with companies like yours.

Be sure to choose an HSA administrator that can deliver the insights you need to inform your benefits strategy as well as increase employee enrollment, engagement and satisfaction.

5. Transparent pricing

When choosing an HSA administrator, it is important to understand the true cost of an account – to both the employers and the employees. A transparent and straightforward pricing strategy is key to calculating the costs you will pay as well as explaining the costs to your employees.

Be sure to obtain a fee schedule from any potential HSA administration partners. This should include all the fees that could be charged for the HSA, when the fees will be charged, and how the fees can be avoided.

Understanding the features offered and having access to a full fee schedule will help you compare not just the cost but the value of the HSAs from each administrator.

Feel confident in your decision by choosing a provider you trust

Choosing an HSA administrator for your business is about finding a partner you can trust to deliver the features and service you and your employees need.

Associated Bank offers Associated Benefits Connection—a trusted HSA and benefit account administrator for businesses across the U.S. Our experienced team can help you build, implement, and manage an HSA plan that puts your needs—and the needs of your employees—first.

If you’re interested in starting a new HSA plan for your business, or if you have any questions about the process, contact us at EmployerServices@AssociatedBank.com

Health savings accounts and benefits planning doesn’t have to be difficult. At Associated Bank, we can help you.