HSAs: Holistic Education and Targeted Outreach

Health savings plans can be complicated for participants, but advisers and plan sponsors can combat that confusion with holistic education and access to informational resources, according to panelists speaking at the 2024 HSA Conference held by PLANSPONSOR, which is a sister publication of PLANADVISER.

For plan sponsors, it’s important to pay attention to spending across the health and retirement plan when strategizing, according to Gregory Puig, partner and head of group insurance at Sentinel. There should be one benefit bucket for the retirement plan and health plan, as well as a focus on determining whether there is overspending in match dollars and underspending in employee contributions to the health plan.

If positioned correctly, these components can then be adjusted annually based on the feedback and needs of the employees. Of course, Puig notes, a key component of such a setup working is if the employee is enrolled in the HSA as soon as possible while building up savings.

“While having open enrollment, [an employer should] clue in their retirement adviser,” he said. “Have the adviser and the broker come together, covering some medical slides, covering some retirement slides.”

In the past, advisers would often educate participants on a one-on-one basis with a focus on retirement. But, according to Puig, that can’t be the case anymore; participants require more holistic financial wellness educators.

“We need people who are going to understand the whole picture and help people ask questions,” he said. “Because the tools that we develop – virtual tools, AI tools, online tools, mobile tools – they’re great but we know that only helps ‘X’ percent of the population. We still have a big piece of the population who don’t want to navigate that. They don’t want to learn that way.”

Michael Eldredge, HSA investment product manager at Inspira Financial, still emphasized the importance of effective digital outreach for overall engagement. He said targeted email has been a useful tool to encourage increases in HSA adoption, investments and contributions.

“So far we’ve engaged in email targeting campaigns, which the employer has to sign off on,” he said. “We try to take the effort out of their hands. We create the communication through the various logistics […] Over time we also want to have the user interface on the website include some coaching and next best action type of interventions. That’s what we’re evolving toward.”

Jake Spiegel, research associate at EBRI, added that a plan sponsor should follow-up to see which outreach campaigns are effective; Spiegel looks at how participant behavior changes after receiving notice of an employer contribution to their HSA.

“What we find is that people who have the benefit of an employer contribution tend to make contributions overall,” he said.

According to Spiegel, the employer contribution allows employees to get a higher overall total contribution while taking a little bit of the burden off the worker themselves. Additionally, people who receive the benefit of an employer contribution are much more likely to invest their HSAs.