Metavante Technologies hopes to jumpstart consumer interest in health-care savings account products as it integrates its payment card and HSA platform solution with the third-party administration software it acquired in January.
The new solution takes up the name of the corporation, BenSoft, that Metavante purchased earlier this year to gain the widely used RepayMe benefits administrative platform of TPAs and health-plan operators. Consumers can use the BenSoft Web interface to access all their benefit accounts, including flexible spending, HSAs and health reimbursement accounts.
The move takes Metavante beyond financial institutions directly into the third-party administrator market. While a “valuable solution” that gives client companies a quick-turn online access portal for their employees’ use, says Aite Group analyst Nancy Atkinson, “this solution falls short of resolving one of the biggest hurdles for consumer directed health care adoption: it does not resolve the challenges faced by the medical provider.”
Metavante notes, however, that “the marketplace third-party administrators, health plans and self-administrating employers—has been calling for the convergence” of administrative and card-based payments platforms, giving consumers point-of-care access to their benefit accounts, said John Reynolds, division president, Metavante Healthcare Payment Solutions, in a statement. “The ability to create a painless on-boarding process, true inter-operability among all benefits accounts and a better consumer experience, that’s the real value.”
