Bend Financial is a Boston-based technology and services company that provides health savings account (HSA) and financial wellness solutions to individuals, employers and organizations in the group benefits distribution market. Its innovative approach and product offerings simplify the use of HSAs while making the product attractive to all types of health care consumers.

Report Card for Bend

as an Investment Vehicle

Investment Threshold

The ideal investment HSA has no investment threshold, allowing the very first dollar you contribute to be invested. If you're using an HSA for investment purposes, seek an administrator that does not hold your dollars hostage in a checking account earning little to no interest. 

Bend has established an investment threshold of $1,000. You must always have $1,000 in the HSA checking account. Any excess dollars over this amount can be transferred to the investment account.

Keeping funds in a low-interest cash account means accountholders miss out on those funds’ potential investment returns; this is known as opportunity cost. In a way this is a hidden fee because the opportunity to earn money on those dollars is lost. In Bend’s case, one could argue that investors are missing out on $59 of earnings, assuming a 6 percent rate of return on $1,000 held in the savings account which only yields $1. The aforementioned numbers are just for one year. Stretch that out to 10, 20, or 30 years and the potential earnings lost are in the thousands. Use the calculator below to estimate the potential earnings lost on uninvested cash.

Investment Account

Bend offers account holders a well designed pre-selected investment lineup composed of 34 mutual funds via HSA Saver, UMB Bank’s investment platform. 70% (24) of the funds in the pre-selected lineup are from the Vanguard Group. The other fund families represented in the lineup are illustrated in the chart below.

The table below displays the number of funds offered for each asset class in the Bend investment lineup.  

At The HSA Report Card we are big proponents of passive index investing and thus administrators that offer low-cost index funds for each of the major asset classes are rated more favorably than those who lack such options. In the table above, you can see that Bend offers low-cost index funds for every major asset class. In fact, low-cost, broadly diversified index funds represent 76% of choices. Bend has done a great job of constructing a well-rounded investment lineup.

How expensive are the funds in the Bend investment lineup?

Bend offers participants a large number of low-priced funds. The expense ratios across asset classes are extremely low due to the heavy emphasis on low-cost index funds from the Vanguard family. Of the 9 HSA administrators in our study that offer pre-selected investment lineups, Bend ranks in the middle of the pack when it comes to investment costs.

Interest-Bearing Account

The Bend HSA Deposit Account is an interest-bearing account. Interest-bearing accounts make sense for participants who are uneasy about investing their HSA dollars in the equity markets.

Condensed Schedule of Fees (Non-Employer Group)

In our study of the top investment HSAs, Bend ranks in the middle of the pack when it comes to fees. Bend charges its participants fixed fees, which is something we at The HSA Report Card view favorably.  

Projected Fees

In this section, we have a little fun projecting fees for each administrator. Our goal was to find the path to the lowest possible fees for each administrator. Keep in mind, we are assuming the HSA is being used solely for investment purposes, therefore only certain fees will apply. Given that every HSA offering is different, there is no perfect way to compare the top 10 administrators in our study. Nonetheless, we gave it a shot and believe there is value in presenting our findings.

In order to compare fees, we made a few simple assumptions:

• Every dollar above the investment threshold was invested.

• Current and future contributions were invested in a single fund.

  • Total Stock Market Index (VTI / VTSAX / SPTM/ FZROX) or S&P 500 index (IVV / VIIIX / VFIAX). We believe these two index funds are one in the same.

• No transaction fee (NTF) or commission-free ETF programs were utilized to buy the index funds.

• If these index funds were not available under the NTF and/or commission-free ETF programs, we turned to the open market and executed a single trade per calendar year in order to keep transaction costs down.

For Bend we made the following assumptions:

1. Every dollar was invested in VTSAX (expense ratio 0.04%)

2. Annual Administrative Fee: $29.50

3. Annual Investment Fee: $36

The chart below summarizes the projected fees on different investment balances for Bend.

The following chart illustrates where Bend stands in terms of fees compared to the other top investment HSA administrators. 

Bend ranks as the 8th lowest cost provider among the top 11 investment HSA providers in our study.

Features

In our search for the very best investment HSAs, we looked for specific technical features that make the investment process simple and hassle-free. Of the 6 technical features we look for in an investment HSA, Bend checks off 5, making it one of the more feature rich investment offerings in our study.

Personal Finance App Integrations

In this modern age of personal finance consumers want the ability to bring together information from multiple accounts and institutions in order to get a 360-degree of their finances and make better spending and saving decisions. The two best personal finance data aggragators are Personal Capital and Mint. The Bend HSA is integrated with Personal Capital, but not with Mint.

Pros & Cons