Benefits August 11, 2009

HSA Account Balances Finally on the Rise

August 11, 2009 (PLANSPONSOR.com) - A San Francisco technology company that offers a health saving account (HSA) recordkeeping system said average individual and family HSA account balances increased during the first quarter of 2009 for the first time since mid-2008.
Reported by

ACanopy Financial news release about its HSA market report said the prior quarterly account balance increase was in the second quarter of 2008.

While individual Health Investment Account (HIA) balances continued to decline by 2% in the first quarter of 2009, family HIA balances also grew for the first time since the second quarter of 2008, Canopy said.

“In the first quarter of 2009, consumers again resumed the trend of utilizing tax-advantaged consumer-directed health care related spending and investment accounts as vehicles for savings and investment towards long-term medical expenditures and retirement. Not only did employer contributions into individual and family HSAs nearly double quarter-over-quarter, but also employee contributions increased into both individual and family HSAs,” said Vik Kashyap, CEO of Canopy, in the news release.

Additional findings indicated:

  • individual and family HIA accountholders age 51+ continued to hold the highest average account values;
  • families aged 25-40 and families aged 41-50 realized the greatest amount of growth in HIA account balances quarter-over-quarter at 14% growth and 3% growth respectively; and
  • the majority of spending in the 2009 first quarter continued to derive from reimbursements, followed by bill payments and then check payments.

The report is available here .

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