Questions on Switching to Fidelity HSA

[easysurfer]

I'm thinking about switching my HSA custodian from HSA Administrators to Fidelity since with HSA Admin, I'm not crazy about the fees and statements that still to me, don't make any sense.

I know several folks here have made the jump to Fidelity. From what I understand, moving from HSA Admin, I'd have to first cash out into a HSA Admin's cash account.

1) How long did it take to cash out? I wanted to wait until there's an uptick in the market (like now) for a few days before cashing out. I confess, doing some market timing .

2) When moved to Fidelity, I know Fidelity has some new funds (for example, Fidelity Health Savings Fund (FHLSX) for HSAs and I'd probably invest there. But I invested not another Fidelity fund (not just for the HSA) would there be additional fees? I really didn't see a mention either way on the Fidelity site I was looking at.

 

[audreyh1]

The cash out occurred by the next day if I recall correctly, so you might be able to catch an up day if you cash out before market close.

The Fidelity HSA is a full brokerage account. You have a huge number of no fee options and very low cost fund offerings and no fee ETF and stock trades. Fidelity has a full range of very low cost index mutual funds. You also have access to funds from other companies, but some require transaction fees.

 

[easysurfer]

The cash out occurred by the next day if I recall correctly, so you might be able to catch an up day if you cash out before market close.

The Fidelity HSA is a full brokerage account. You have a huge number of no fee options and very low cost fund offerings and no fee ETF and stock trades. Fidelity has a full range of very low cost index mutual funds. You also have access to funds from other companies, but some require transaction fees.

Thanks for the helpful info. The wheels are in motion. I just did my cash out request. According to the HSA Admin site, transactions done by 2 pm est go in effect the same day. So, I had about an hour to spare.

 

[easysurfer]

Well, so much for market timing.

Market was up over 500 pts earlier so had me thinking, I'm going make a killing cashing out my HSA before switching to Fidelity's HSA. Then Dow decides to take a dive and ends up only up about 10 pts.

 

[pb4uski]

So are you having HSA Administrators send you a check?

I went through a trustee-to-trustee transfer between HSA Administrators and Fido and it was a PITA. It would have been much easier/quicker to just do a regular withdrawal for my account balance and have them send me a check and then walk into the nearby Fido office and deposit it to my HSA account and have then tag it as a rollover contribution.

 

[easysurfer]

So are you having HSA Administrators send you a check?

I went through a trustee-to-trustee transfer between HSA Administrators and Fido and it was a PITA. It would have been much easier/quicker to just do a regular withdrawal for my account balance and have them send me a check and then walk into the nearby Fido office and deposit it to my HSA account and have then tag it as a rollover contribution.

Haven't put anything in motion yet except the cashing out.

Plan on doing a trustee-to-trustee transfer. Saw a previous thread about HSA Admin dragging their feet. That's a big reason why switching in the first place .

 

[audreyh1]

My trustee to trustee transfer took along time - maybe a month? And in the end Fidelity contacted me to call HSA Administrators to get status. They were a pain.

 

[easysurfer]

My trustee to trustee transfer took along time - maybe a month? And in the end Fidelity contacted me to call HSA Administrators to get status. They were a pain.

Did HSA make you jump through hoops just get got a status?

Sounds like they refused to give a status to Fidelity?

I'm not that much in a rush as waiting about a month is fine with me. But don't like dealing with those who are a pain.

Reminds me of years ago trying to work with a credit union. Wasn't long before I closed out the account and took my business elsewhere.

 

[travelover]

So are you having HSA Administrators send you a check?

I went through a trustee-to-trustee transfer between HSA Administrators and Fido and it was a PITA. It would have been much easier/quicker to just do a regular withdrawal for my account balance and have them send me a check and then walk into the nearby Fido office and deposit it to my HSA account and have then tag it as a rollover contribution.

My trustee to trustee transfer took along time - maybe a month? And in the end Fidelity contacted me to call HSA Administrators to get status. They were a pain.

I had the same experience, so glad to be rid of those idiots.

 

[davebarnes]

It took 6+ weeks for me.
I hate Optum Bank.

 

[Montecfo]

I am looking at Fidelity too. Has anyone done a transfer out of HSA Bank/TDA?

I really do not want to have funds out of the market.

 

[Joylush]

I just did this. Switched from Optum Bank HSA to Fidelity.

Made the request and after a month with nothing showing up I contacted Fidelity. All they could tell me was to call Optum. Called Optum and was told first I had to convert everything to cash. Nobody told me that. So I immediately did that. Went back to Fidelity and created a new transfer request and the money was received by Fidelity directly from Optum within a week.

 

[audreyh1]

Did HSA make you jump through hoops just get got a status?

Sounds like they refused to give a status to Fidelity?

I'm not that much in a rush as waiting about a month is fine with me. But don't like dealing with those who are a pain.

Reminds me of years ago trying to work with a credit union. Wasn't long before I closed out the account and took my business elsewhere.

They were refusing to give Fidelity some of that transfer status information and requiring the customer to call in for that information.

 

[mrfeh]

It took 6+ weeks for me.
I hate Optum Bank.

I'm getting the impression it takes a long time for all of them. I transferred from healthequity to Fido a few months ago, and it was weeks (3-4?) before the money was available at Fido.

 

[pb4uski]

That is why I think it is easiest/best to just do a full withdrawal and have them send you a check since that can happen quickly, then deposit the check to you new Fido HSA and have them code it as a rollover contribution.

 

[sengsational]

This thread has a lot of answered questions and documented experiences: https://www.early-retirement.org/forums/f38/fidelity-offers-individual-hsa-accounts-94781.html

 

[travelover]

That is why I think it is easiest/best to just do a full withdrawal and have them send you a check since that can happen quickly, then deposit the check to you new Fido HSA and have them code it as a rollover contribution.

Agree as long as it is that simple. My concern was that it might not get recorded as a transfer as opposed to a withdrawal.

 

[pb4uski]

Rollovers are reported on line 14b of Form 8889... I received a Form 5498-SA from Fidelity reporing it as a rollover.

 

[CoolChange]

HSA Bank/TDA to Fidelity

I am looking at Fidelity too. Has anyone done a transfer out of HSA Bank/TDA?

I really do not want to have funds out of the market.

I did this about 18 months ago. My Fidelity guy even had his assistant fill out my paperwork and send it off to HSA and TD for me.


The transfer from TD was very quick and smooth.


The transfer from HSA Bank (a bit of uninvested cash), took weeks and multiple phone calls.


I cannot ever see me doing business with HSA Bank again. I still have multiple accounts with both TDA and Fidelity.

 

[rkser]

I have our HSA accounts in Fido already, and am considering changing over my Vanguard accounts to Fidelity due to a idiotic Vanguard Flagship Representative.

I have heard about better customer service at Fidelity & they have a Office in our city. Further investments will be in Vanguard ETFs.

If any body has transferred their accounts over to Fido, wonder how their experience was ?

 

[The Cosmic Avenger]

I debated starting a new thread, but I do want to move our Optum HSA to Fidelity, and I think at least a couple of you have done exactly that. The one thing I can't seem to find any information on is, if you're still contributing to your HSA, how is that handled? Does the employer send the contributions to the new custodian? Or do we need to keep two HSAs open, and keep transferring funds from Optum to Fidelity? If it's the latter case, we can't avoid the fees from Optum, and so I'm not sure there's a point in switching while we're still contributing. Optum may suck, but they do have Vanguard funds, so our fairly new HSA has still done very well.

 

[FLSUnFIRE]

Read your plan docs. I strongly suspect that if they are affiliated with Optum you may will stuck with them, or at least not able to direct employer contributions to another provider. I was with Payflex on my old plan and as soon as I could after FIRE, moved to Fidelity.

 

[mrfeh]

I debated starting a new thread, but I do want to move our Optum HSA to Fidelity, and I think at least a couple of you have done exactly that. The one thing I can't seem to find any information on is, if you're still contributing to your HSA, how is that handled? Does the employer send the contributions to the new custodian? Or do we need to keep two HSAs open, and keep transferring funds from Optum to Fidelity? If it's the latter case, we can't avoid the fees from Optum, and so I'm not sure there's a point in switching while we're still contributing. Optum may suck, but they do have Vanguard funds, so our fairly new HSA has still done very well.

Bolded above is what we have to do. We just xfer funds a couple times per year.

We opened the Fido HSA because the investment fees & options at the employer's HSA were lousy.

 

[The Cosmic Avenger]

Bolded above is what we have to do. We just xfer funds a couple times per year.

We opened the Fido HSA because the investment fees & options at the employer's HSA were lousy.

Hm, I thought you'd still be paying fees, but thank you for that phrasing, the Optum fee is listed as "Monthly Investment Fee", so if we transfer funds out to Fidelity and invest them there, we could probably save it.

So now I need to decide whether it's worth $36/year to add another chore that I have to remember.

 

[The Cosmic Avenger]

I finally did it! I've got an HSA open at Fidelity, and a transfer order has been initiated. (At least, I hope so! My Optum balance has been reduced by the amount of the requested transfer!)

If anyone's trying to leave Optum, a couple of tips.

You'll have to cash out your investments; Optum will not do it for you, and will not transfer in-kind. I didn't test this myself, but found many people saying Optum refused to transfer their funds for those reasons. I started out by selling everything in Optum, then opened the new account at Fidelity, waited a few days, and (since Fido said they would take a few days to send the transfer to Optum) then submitted the online transfer form before Optum was showing the cash as settled. I was a bit worried, but I figured I could always submit a new request.

For those still contributing, this may vary, but Optum charges us $20 for transfers. That may have deterred me at first, but then they also charge us $3/month just to have an investment account, so I'm saving $36/year by doing this. If I make 2 transfers a year, it's almost breaking even, and I get the satisfaction of giving Optum the finger for only $4/year. If I really couldn't stand losing money on this, I could do one transfer a year, but I think the opportunity cost of those uninvested monies would be higher than $20.