Moving HSA Advice: from PayFlex to Fidelity (2024)

I have my HSA WITH payFlex but this year, due to an expected procedure, I changed my health plan to a non high deductible option. I want to take this opportunity to get out of payflex and move it all to fidelity. Does anyone have any experience making this type of transfer? Will payflex or fidelity charge me any fees to make this transfer, and is there anyway I can avoid the fees? Will I need to contact both payflex and fidelity to make the transfer or will just one institution deal with the other on my behalf?

If anyone could offer me direction/steps, so I don’t make any errors with the transfer, I’d be thankful.

I moved my HSA to Fidelity when I retired to "escape" the fees of the company HSA provider. Fidelity has no fees.

Contact only Fidelity, they will step you through the process. This is a good process with any account transfer, the company receiving the money has the incentive to make things go smoothly.

Obviously I don't know if your current HSA has an account closing fee or not. If there is one, it is likely a two-digit kind of number.

Relevant article: https://thefinancebuff.com/how-to-rollo ... r-fee.html

I just did this. Here's the steps I took to move my HSA from Bank A to Fidelity:

• 1. Called Bank A to get contact info to send Fidelity transfer of asset forms to. You'll need this address when you initiate the transfer with Fidelity.
  2. On Fidelity website, initiated transfer of assets (trustee to trustee). Basically you input a bunch of info into an online wizard and it spits out prefilled transfer forms for you to print and get notarized.
  3. Printed forms, got notarized, copied, and mailed to Fidelity.
  4. Called Bank A to ensure they received the transfer request from Fidelity.
  5. Tracked my transfer status via Fidelity website.
  6. Bank A did charge me $10 or $15 to transfer assets which was deducted automatically from the amount they sent Fidelity.

Hope this helps! All told it took me over a month.

David Jay wrote: ↑Thu Jan 21, 2021 2:45 pmI moved my HSA to Fidelity when I retired to "escape" the fees of the company HSA provider. Fidelity has no fees.

Contact only Fidelity, they will step you through the process. This is a good process with any account transfer, the company receiving the money has the incentive to make things go smoothly.

Obviously I don't know if your current HSA has an account closing fee or not. If there is one, it is likely a two-digit kind of number.

buzzbee wrote: ↑Thu Jan 21, 2021 2:58 pmI just did this. Here's the steps I took to move my HSA from Bank A to Fidelity:

• 1. Called Bank A to get contact info to send Fidelity transfer of asset forms to. You'll need this address when you initiate the transfer with Fidelity.
  2. On Fidelity website, initiated transfer of assets (trustee to trustee). Basically you input a bunch of info into an online wizard and it spits out prefilled transfer forms for you to print and get notarized.
  3. Printed forms, got notarized, copied, and mailed to Fidelity.
  4. Called Bank A to ensure they received the transfer request from Fidelity.
  5. Tracked my transfer status via Fidelity website.
  6. Bank A did charge me $10 or $15 to transfer assets which was deducted automatically from the amount they sent Fidelity.

Hope this helps! All told it took me over a month.

Can this be done as a transfer in kind, or do you need to liquidate the investments first? (Assuming the securities are common, not collective investment trusts.) This makes a difference to me as I'm in California and so HSAs are not treated as tax-advantaged.

David Jay wrote: ↑Thu Jan 21, 2021 2:45 pmI moved my HSA to Fidelity when I retired to "escape" the fees of the company HSA provider. Fidelity has no fees.

Contact only Fidelity, they will step you through the process. This is a good process with any account transfer, the company receiving the money has the incentive to make things go smoothly.

Obviously I don't know if your current HSA has an account closing fee or not. If there is one, it is likely a two-digit kind of number.

Does fidelity have a form authorizing a full transfer from the old HSA and directing the old HSA to be closed?
Payflex chargers a fee to transfer and another fee to close the account, but i will only be charged the fee once if it’s all done in the same transaction. Does anyone have any experience with this?

i'm also doing this now from PayFlex to Fidelity as my employee changed insurance providers effective 2022 and I now have a new HSA account.
It looks like I have only 2 options:

a) Pay the Account Closure fee of $25 and get the funds myself OR
b) Trustee to Trustee fee of $25 and the account automatically closes without an additional fee

I guess I will choose option b)

Unfortunately they will not transfer assets "in kind", it's a liquidation which is what happened last time transferred my HSA as well.

David Jay wrote: ↑Thu Jan 21, 2021 2:45 pmI moved my HSA to Fidelity when I retired to "escape" the fees of the company HSA provider. Fidelity has no fees.

Contact only Fidelity, they will step you through the process. This is a good process with any account transfer, the company receiving the money has the incentive to make things go smoothly.

Obviously I don't know if your current HSA has an account closing fee or not. If there is one, it is likely a two-digit kind of number.

Great advice! I recently opened an HSA account at Fido unfunded in preparation of my upcoming retirement. Then I found out we changed providers so I initiated the transfer this week. The process could not have been easier including the required form to submit to the current provider for the transfer that had to be signed and mailed. There are no fees at Fido but I will have to pay $25.00 to BMO Harris. This is a transfer fee that assures them that they will recover nearly every dime of interest paid over the past 5-6 years in the account that couldn't be invested!! My transfer balance is about 20K and while it's not all the worlds money and I'll only invest about half of it, it will be nice to get some tax free earning on it over the next 5-10 years provided I don't need it.

stocknoob4111 wrote: ↑Fri Jan 07, 2022 6:57 pmi'm also doing this now from PayFlex to Fidelity as my employee changed insurance providers effective 2022 and I now have a new HSA account.
It looks like I have only 2 options:

a) Pay the Account Closure fee of $25 and get the funds myself OR
b) Trustee to Trustee fee of $25 and the account automatically closes without an additional fee

I guess I will choose option b)

Unfortunately they will not transfer assets "in kind", it's a liquidation which is what happened last time transferred my HSA as well.

There are a number of threads on avoiding the $25 fee for transferring assets to Fidelity (essentially you pull from Fidelity). Here is one example:
viewtopic.php?t=304155

I'm also starting the process and will be following that threads example to avoid the fee.

I did this back in July of 2020. PayFlex is a bit challenging to navigate at times. I wanted to do the trustee to trustee direct transfer, but PayFlex assumed I was closing my ENTIRE account, which then needed to be reversed. It was annoying. However, Fidelity did tell me that they would reimburse the $25 fee that PayFlex charges, once per year. So liquidating your PayFlex investment account almost entirely (leaving a few dollars) and then moving the cash from the cash side of the account (less the $1000 minimum to keep the investment account open), is an option to move fee-free.

Alternatively, and this is what I did that year, and just yesterday for this year, you can do a 60-day rollover. Take a disbursem*nt into your checking account from PayFlex. Then either call Fidelity HSA and tell them you want to do a 60-day rollover and they can pull the funds over and code it appropriately, or download their deposit slip and check the box for "60-day rollover" and cut them a check to have them deposit funds into your HSA account.

The call to fidelity, including wait time, took me 15 minutes. Credit is available to invest immediately, which took me about 3 minutes.

Hope this helps.

Doing this now... I put in my request to Payflex to close out my Investment position and move to Cash. Not sure how I should execute the next steps. I wanted to ask Fidelity if they can reimburse the $25 but I am guessing that can only be done if it's a pull from Fidelity.

If I do a pull from Fidelity I am going to get hit with fees twice, once for trustee transfer and one for account closure as a pull does not automatically close out the HSA account. If I don't close out the HSA account i'll get hit with the $5/month fee and I don't want to do what is suggested in this thread - i.e. draw down to zero and let fees accrue as that is risky, don't want to get sent to collections etc.

If I do a push, Payflex has (had?) a trustee transfer and closure in a single step with a single fee but then I will not get re-imbursed by Fidelity, I guess there is no way to escape at least one fee with Payflex.

Also, this is in addition to possibly losing much more by being out of the market since it will take a few weeks for the whole thing to execute. Ugh! This is the part of HSAs I hate - I wish it wasn't so complicated.