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February 05, 2009
Health Savings Accounts Show Only Modest Declines in Troubled Financial Markets
Canopy Financial, a leader in healthcare banking technology solutions that connect healthcare and financial services, announced the results of their Health Savings Account (HSA) Market Report for Q3'08. Canopy, whose industry leading HealthDirect® and CareGain® platforms serve as the core consumer-directed healthcare (CDH) account management and administration backend for some of the largest banks and health plans respectively, collects and aggregates a wide range of statistics related to actual HSA usage published quarterly. In Q3'08, despite sharp drops in U.S. financial markets, Individual and Family Health Savings Accounts showed only modest declines of two and four percent respectively.
However, Health Investment Account (HIA) balances sharply declined due to recent stock market performance with individual HIAs declining on average 17 percent quarter-over-quarter. Family HIA balances fared better, declining on average only eight percent quarter-over-quarter.
"In spite of the recent financial crisis, one thing to note about Health Savings Accounts, and specifically HIAs, is how contributions into these accounts resemble that of 401(k) plans," said Vik Kashyap, CEO of Canopy. "Even in the midst of significant declines in the stock markets, inflows to individual and family HIAs were double and triple that of outflows respectively."
Canopy's Q3'08 HSA Market Report results showed that older individuals and families (age 51+) continued to hold the highest average HIA account values, nearly triple the HIA account values held by younger individuals and families (age 25 - 40). In addition, card payments continued to lag behind every other spend category, with the majority of spend out of Health Savings Accounts being derived from bill payments and reimbursements. The market report can be downloaded at www.canopyfi.com.
Learn more about Health Savings Accounts and how they can save you money at http://www.health--savings--accounts.com
Posted by Wiley Long at February 5, 2009 08:15 AM