The following is a special contribution by AccessPoint HSA for 401kTV:
Why the right people, at the right time and in the right place matters.
Recently Access Point HSA was asked to present to a small group of benefit brokers, financial advisers and HR executives in downtown Philadelphia and without hesitation we jumped at the chance. We accepted the offer not for the simple fact that a trip to the city of brotherly love and the birthplace of our nation’s founding documents is always a treat but, because we so rarely get all three of these groups represented in a single place. All too often these meetings, presentations and panels take place in a vacuum and only one of the aforementioned groups take in the content in real time. From there it’s anyone guess as to how the information is re-presented, translated, repurposed and reused.
So it was this format and this audience that lent itself to not only a robust discussion but, a real shift in how they began to think about the parallels between their respective businesses. Along with our co-hosts and moderator the conversation centered on the rise of consumer driven health plans (CDHP), the real need to help employers and employees tackle the rising cost of health care and insurance in the workplace and finally the lack of crossover between the benefits side of the equation and the investment advisory world. Getting everyone to this point may have been the easy part, the more difficult question we asked was “How do we get everyone else to see this?” The answer lies in the ever present and ever evolving world of education.
In particular we heard from one seasoned HR executive about the lack of education around issues such as HSA vendor selection, how an HSA provider may work in conjunction with not only the health insurance provider but, also with the 401k provider or even how, by design, they don’t work together at all. She was both introspective and brave in her proclamation that “had we known then what we know now, we would have done such a deeper dive and vetting process with regard to our current HSA provider”. She went on to explain that her company had been with the same insurance carrier for over 15 years and never thought of the implications of a robust HSA vendor search process. What’s more, for others in the group to hear her say this led to even more questions and conversation lasting throughout the meeting and safe to assume well beyond.
The presentation, the panel discussion and the Q &A was time well spent in and of itself. However, because each of the benefit, advisory and HR professionals were well represented each group got to see how the other reacted to a particular comment or question, hear the feedback and internalize it all while being able to ask even more questions based on the other representative groups. Representative groups, discussing important issues that will forge both path and policy… perhaps all of our meeting should be in Philadelphia.
