Florida Banking August/September 2024

your financial institution must spend on the HSA product, including tax reporting, operations and compliance. In addition, it will not only provide marketing collateral and distribution assistance, but will help your internal commercial teams close HSA sales and drive net-new customers into the bank to build new relationships. The best HSA partnerships should allow your institution to offer a competitive solution for market differentiation, customer acquisition, deposit growth, and revenue with minimal lift for the financial institution itself. Not all HSA providers are created equal; how to find the right fit for your institution For a successful HSA partnership that ensures you will maximize the benefit of offering an HSA, look for an HSA administrator that offers a partnership model. That means the financial institution serves as the custodian for the HSA accounts and enjoys the benefits of co-branded cards and web portal experience, while the HSA administrator handles plan administration, customer education, onboarding, customer service, compliance maintenance, sales and marketing support, and more. In order to implement, sustain, and grow an HSA offering, financial institutions need to look for an HSA partner that exhibits these characteristics: • Allows you to hold the deposits and keep the interchange, spread and fee revenue. • Easily integrates into your current systems infrastructure. • Helps you build a plan to achieve strategic goals and objectives each year, including clear and actionable reporting features and an easy-to use dashboard for online account management. • Includes comprehensive customer support, onboarding, and extensive resources for internal HSA Partnership, Continued on page 16

service employees, compliance officers who can offer deep industry knowledge and guidance around federal HSA guidelines, and operational oversight on a daily basis, all of which adds to the overhead stripping away any potential for profit. 2. Software Purchase. You can buy a ready-made HSA solution with existing technology platforms. However, they can be incredibly expensive and offer no opportunity to hold deposits, keep interchange, obtain customer data, or generate revenue. These platforms are not customized or branded to your institution and come with additional requirements to staff a team, including sales and customer service representatives, to manage these solutions internally, which adds to the overhead expense. 3. Selling your book of business. You can outsource your HSA product and in doing so, sell your book of business, along with its deposits and revenue potentials, to another financial institution that is offering a more modern HSA product and may also cross sell other financial products that you already offer. 4. Partner with an HSA provider to offer a cobranded product with a personalized approach and a cohesive customer experience. You’re looking for a partner with a proven track record of existing banking relationships for reference, engaged account holders and employer groups, and a platform that both fully integrates with your current systems and can be branded to the bank. Of these options, a true partnership solution is the most advantageous. It can and should offer an HSA product that allows you to retain all of the core deposits, interchange revenue, and fee revenue while having access to all customer data for relationship building and cross-sales. It will reduce the overhead

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