I say this tongue in cheek, but I realized this morning that it’s true. We are debating our mission statement and focus as we move forward and continue to grow. Many companies, myHSA included, become enamoured with potential products or areas to get into across the vast employee benefits space. Now, we do dabble and currently have been testing other products, but we decided years ago that spending accounts are our core business. We are not trying to do insured health, dental, and vision benefits – many do that, and they do it well.
The longer I stay in the business, the more I realize nobody wants to be in the HSA business. Insurers do not seem to be interested, and I can see somewhat why. It is counterintuitive to their true insurance model. They are good at pricing, underwriting risk and investing the premiums – makes sense. Growth and focus on spending accounts is self-insurance, sending a mixed signal. Many other smaller competitors in our space do not focus on HSA’s, and the actual founder(s) will work in the benefits or insurance business. I can name them but won’t, haha. They also get to a certain size and pivot to become a TPA for insurance. Again, maybe this is a great business and have better margins, etc., but there are also way more competitors in all these spaces. Even as a heavily funded “disruptor” League came into the space with HSA’s but pivoted out, moving into group insurance and are now a health OS system.
This makes me want to triple down on spending accounts because I still feel they have a unique and strong position in the group benefits space. I may be biased, but it seems their popularity continues to grow with employers. As costs pressures continue with traditional insurance, there needs to be a self-funded option. The most important aspect that I still think gets missed is that employers and employees love the flexibility, and there is a valuable benefit for every type of employee wherever they are in their lifestyle to get value – especially if the wellness spending account is in place.
This is a big reason we partnered with Bizflex to bring them on our platform. They are a well-established HSA provider in Western Canada, we could tech enable them and their clients and continue to grow our spending account user base. We want to continue to find HSA providers to collaborate with or acquire to continue our expansion into the spending account space in Canada.
I get super excited even writing this blog on spending accounts and where we could go, but am still baffled that so many do not see this space as a focus. This is good news for us, and we will continue to make it our focus and provide the best spending accounts in Canada!
Steve McEwan
COO & Co-Founder
myHSA