HSA Provider Claims Integration – A Critical Component for Brokers, Employers and Accountholders

When it comes to claims integration in the HSA marketplace, what an HSA provider can do—or not do—in terms of integrating with healthcare carriers is often a make-it-or-break-it factor for brokers and employers, and can also directly impact the success of an employer’s HSA program short and long-term.

But while seamlessly integrating an HSA provider with healthcare carriers is a must in the modern world, HSA provider integration abilities vary substantially and also carry other potential considerations. Brokers and employers alike need to be informed and understand all the factors surrounding HSA provider integration capabilities.

Streamlining Claims Integration Through an Agnostic Approach Creates Maximum Opportunities—and Flexibility for the Future

Many HSA providers have gone down the path of forcing their partners to sacrifice flexibility for integration.

In short, integration is only made possible when the healthcare carrier works with an HSA provider it owns or has an exclusive relationship with. This type of approach can create major issues for brokers and employers—especially employers that frequently revisit their healthcare carriers and wish to make changes. While the integration upfront may make processes simpler, it complicates any future changes to either the health plan or HSA provider, often creating a time-consuming, start-from-scratch situation.

Other HSA integration options do exist.

TPAs may be able to integrate healthcare claims and deductible information for HSA accountholders, but usually only as a result of a long and sometimes costly project for an employer.

So, when an HSA provider like Bend can integrate data quickly and easily from nearly every major carrier and benefit offering through an agnostic approach, it can be a game-changer for brokers, employers and accountholders.

An agnostic approach to HSA integrations ensures the HSA platform can interface with any healthcare carrier platform, eliminating incompatibility issues, potential data corruption and vendor lock-in limitations. No individual agreements are needed for specific carriers, meaning the integrations bring all the pieces of the healthcare puzzle together and allow accountholders to view and manage their healthcare spending in one place regardless of carrier, while providing brokers and employers unmatched ease of use and much needed flexibility for future changes.

An HSA-Centric Focus Plus Easy Integrations Benefit Brokers, Employers and Accountholders

When exploring HSA provider options, it’s no secret that not all HSA providers are created equal. Coupled with the right HSA integration capabilities, it can pay—literally and figuratively—to find an HSA provider who specializes in and focuses on health savings accounts, versus providers who have reactively added HSA offerings to their existing cache of products and services.

With an HSA-centric provider like Bend, every element of the HSA experience, including integrations, has been thoughtfully designed to make HSAs easy for everyone—brokers, employers and individual accountholders.

The Bend HSA platform provides quick, customized integrations for nearly every major healthcare carrier and benefit offering. These integrations allow for tracking and monitoring annual deductibles, connecting claims for easy expense management and recordkeeping, capturing historical claims data and identifying all HSA-eligible expenses—all in one platform. Accountholders benefit from getting a comprehensive view of all their healthcare spending through their HSA, while brokers and employers enjoy improved efficiencies, eliminate the need for multiple platforms and cumbersome paper trails and never have to worry about changing HSA programs if the decision is made to change health plan carriers or other benefit offerings. Bend’s agnostic approach to integrations also eliminates the issues and manual processes often surrounding orphan accounts.

The Easier the HSA, the Better Account Engagement, the More FICA Savings

Choosing an HSA partner that offers seamless integrations, proactively encourages account engagement and makes HSAs easier for everyone equals optimized results and maximum savings for employers and accountholders. And brokers benefit from increased client satisfaction and loyalty.

With the right HSA program, everyone wins.

Because remember, the more employees contribute to their own HSAs through their employer-sponsored program, the more money employers save. By setting up an employer-sponsored HSA program and providing their employees with an easy way to make pretax HSA contributions through payroll deductions, employers lower both their own and their employees’ FICA tax liability. By reducing the amount of income that applies to FICA taxes, employers and their employees directly save the 7.65% on any pretax employee contributions made through their HSA program.

Ultimately, employer and employee FICA savings potential is directly tied to employee engagement in an employer-sponsored HSA program. And that engagement can be greatly impacted by how easy the HSA is to use and how well it integrates into the rest of an accountholder’s healthcare puzzle—particularly their claims data and deductible details.

Bend HSAs are built for peak performance, maximum FICA savings and ultimate ease of use. Bend’s integrations go a step further to provide streamlined receipt tracking and automated capture of and guidance on all HSA-eligible expenses paid across the healthcare spectrum.

The Bend HSA platform identifies all HSA-eligible expenses, including unreimbursed expenses, so accountholders never miss out on an opportunity to benefit from their HSA, and employers achieve maximum FICA savings.

Bend HSAs also bring deductible details into clear focus and help accountholders understand how their plan deductibles and their HSA work together to optimize positive impact and financial savings.

Along with integration details and ease of HSA use, be sure to examine the numbers to find the best HSA partner to maximize success.

• Bend average account balance is 40% higher than the national average
• Bend accountholder contributions are 60% higher than the national average
• Bend has 25% more accountholders as investors than the national average

Provide a Seamless HSA Experience with Bend

When you partner with Bend for your HSA program, you can take advantage of Bend’s agnostic integration approach and quickly integrate data from nearly every major healthcare plan and benefit offering, creating a streamlined, headache-free, effective HSA program. And the integrations don’t stop there.

Bend also integrates with many other providers of services to employers, such as enrollment systems, HRIS and payroll. Add in a variety of feature-rich dashboards, time and money-saving automations, comprehensive employer and employee resources, unparalleled support and a superior user experience designed to deliver optimal savings and benefits, and you have the complete HSA package.

Unlock your true HSA potential with the right HSA partner.