The new buzz coming down the pike, albeit, one that has been bandied about for the last few years, is HSA...do you know how and when they will impact you? Is your financial institution prepared for what looks to be the HSA wave of opportunity that will be coming your way in the near future?

As a quick reference, HSAs - Health Savings Accounts - are used in conjunction with High Deductible Health Plans, where the customer, generally through her place of employment, sets aside tax-free money to pay for medical expenses, up to the point her traditional insurance coverage begins. According to a Mintel International Group Ltd. report on HSAs, "HSAs essentially operate as an IRA for healthcare. They are a hybrid product - a combination of insurance along with a tax-deferred investment account that allows for tax-free withdrawals to pay for medical expenses. In some ways, the product is also similar to whole life insurance - it includes both a protection component as well as the opportunity to build savings through a separate savings account.

What HSAs mean to your financial institution...

When IRAs were first introduced, they were very slow to take off; however, their true potential was realized when employers began to offer them across the board, and once that occurred, all financial institutions became players as they realized the potential that was there in helping people manage their retirement money...Similarly, as more and more employers begin to include HSAs in their employee benefits packages, employees will seize on this opportunity to build savings through a separate savings account. Who is going to help these people manage these tax deferred savings accounts? Why, your financial institution, of course! And how are you going to go about doing so? Well, with uMonitor's help, of course!

uBenefit™ - uMonitor's Benefits Plan Manager, is the first service of its kind that is available on the market today for financial institutions to help employers and employees better manage the setup and ongoing administration of benefits accounts, such as HSAs. For both the employer and bank, the HSA setup is seamlessly integrated...it manages funding of the account through rollover, transfer, initial deposit or recurring deposits. The employer portal offers each employer the ability to manage each employee and her contribution while uMonitor takes care of all money movement and distribution, thus eliminating many cumbersome manual processes. The same is true for an employee moving from a single to a family plan...uBenefit™ can execute the correct path for each variation of the plan created by the employer. Additionally, once the HSA plan is setup, each employee is now a customer of your financial institution, so, to access their HSA, they have to log onto your website...therein creating a variety of cross-sell and up-sell opportunities for your institution.

Early adopters have been using uBenefit™ for the past two years, and we are now seeing a growing demand...if HSAs are in your future in 2008, please call us to schedule a meeting, because, with uMonitor, uCan be ready for the HSA wave!