Although health savings accounts currently have $10 billion in assets and are used by eight million people, those assets are expected to rise to $71 billion within fives years, Forbes reports.
And as more employers turn to HSAs as a way of defraying healthcare costs, financial advisers are urging investors to take a hard look at the fees they pay—particularly for accounts that have $2,000 or more in assets. That frequently is the threshold at which investors can move their money out of ultra-safe investments such as CDs and money market funds into equity mutual funds.
There are no fiduciary standards being held to HSAs, as there are to 401(k) plans, according to experts—all the more reason for HSA investors to take a hard look at the fees their HSA administrator receives, particularly if they move their money into actively managed mutual funds.
As Forbes puts it, “The puny balances most savers have in their HSAs are hardly a gold mine. But whatever the economics at the moment, there’s cause for concern about weak disclosure, lax legal oversight and high fees on savings that people are counting on to keep their pill bottles filled in old age.”
