Flex Frequently Asked Questions
Find the answers below to the questions most frequently asked by our members. If you are enrolled in a Surency Flex plan, visit the Member Account to learn more about your benefits.
Find the answers below to the questions most frequently asked by our members. If you are enrolled in a Surency Flex plan, visit the Member Account to learn more about your benefits.
Surency Flex offers four ways to access your plan details:
Contact Surency Flex Customer Service at 866-818-8805.
Surency Flex offers email and text notifications regarding details of your account. To set up these features, log in to your Member Account, visit the “Statements & Notifications” tab and click on “Update Notification Preferences”. Enter your cell phone number and/or email address and choose your alert options. Click “Submit” to save your changes.
Treat your Surency Flex Benefits Card like a credit card. If it’s lost, contact Surency Flex Customer Service immediately at 866-818-8805. Or you can report it lost via your Member Account or the mobile app. Log in and select the “Profile” tab, select “Banking/Cards,” then “Report Lost/Stolen”. Click “Submit” to save your changes. Once you’ve reported your card lost or stolen, Surency Flex will send you a replacement Benefits Card.
Use your Surency Flex Benefits Card like a credit card to pay for eligible expenses at the time of service or write the Benefits Card number on the bill you receive (just like you were paying with a credit card). By providing your card as the initial form of payment, you will automatically use funds in your account and will not need to wait for reimbursement. Please note, you should keep your receipts from any Benefits Card purchases in case we need to see those for verification of the expense.
Surency Flex offers four ways to access your plan details:
When you are in a foreign country, you will not be able to use your Surency Flex Benefits Card. However, you can still file a claim for reimbursement if it is for an eligible medical expense. Always remember to keep your documentation and receipts (in US dollars).
HSA Advance is a special feature of certain Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) if your employer’s policy allows it. HSA Advance allows you to access future HSA funds upfront, before they have been contributed. For example, if you have claims that are greater than the balance of your HSA Account (including investment account(s)), you can access HSA Advance funds to help cover the cost. It works similar to a bank’s overdraft protection but doesn’t accrue interest or require additional fees. The amount available in the HSA Advance fund is determined based upon your annual contribution amount and your employer’s policy regarding this benefit.
No. If your employer allows HSA Advance, it is included automatically as part of your HSA. You will see your available HSA Advance funds in your online Member Account.
If you make a payment for an eligible expense using your Surency Flex Benefits Card or through your Member Account, and you do not have enough funds in your HSA or investment account(s) to cover the expense, HSA Advance will automatically advance funds, up to your advance limit, at the point of payment.
Likewise, if you pay for an eligible expense with personal funds and request reimbursement from your HSA, funds will be advanced at the time of reimbursement. The amount available will be determined based upon your annual contribution amount, and your employer’s policy regarding this benefit.
NOTE: You must use your HSA available balance, as well as funds in your HSA investment account, before HSA Advance funds are applied to the expense.
Your HSA Advance funds will be available for eligible expenses according to your employer's policy. Typically, they will be available on the first day of your Plan Year.
No. Unlike a bank overdraft advance, HSA Advance does not accrue interest, and you do not pay any additional fees if you access funds in the account.
If your employer allows for HSA Advance, it is included with your HSA automatically; there is no option to opt out. If you don’t wish to use this feature, be sure to carefully monitor your HSA cash balance using the Surency Flex mobile app or online Member Account to ensure that payments do not exceed your balance.
You can access HSA Advance details any time using the Accounts Page in your Member Account. It will tell you your Total Available Balance, which will include what is in your HSA currently plus any unused funds from HSA Advance. It will also show you a breakdown of your different accounts, including the Advance Balance, which is the amount available in your HSA Advance fund.
On the Account Activity page, you can select to view activity for your HSA or your HSA Advance account. There, you can see all transfers that have been made, and if you have an outstanding HSA Advance balance that needs to be repaid.
Your HSA Advance repayment balance is automatically repaid as your payroll deductions and employer contributions are applied to your HSA until the advance is paid in full.
No. Use of the HSA Advance fund has no tax implications. At year end, you will receive Form 5498-SA showing the amount contributed to your HSA during the year. If you have questions, contact your tax preparer or visit IRS.gov for tax preparation resources.
While HSA use continues to grow, it can be intimidating to decide to switch to an HSA-eligible high deductible health plan (HDHP). Surency’s HSA Advance feature provides you with another way to incentivize employees to participate.
HSA Advance enables you to provide HSA funds to your employees to pay for eligible expenses before they have contributed the funds themselves. A typical scenario is at the beginning of a Plan Year when an employee first enrolls in an HSA or an existing enrollee has a zero balance, and incurs an unplanned medical expense. You set the amount per employee.
From an employer perspective, HSA Advance works like this:
This is how HSA Advance works for employees:
As the employer offering this feature, you are responsible for funding the HSA Advance account for all eligible employees.
You will receive a notification indicating when and how much HSA Advance funding will be pulled from the bank account you designated. The system will automatically debit this account based on the amounts in the notification.
If you offer HSA Advance, you must provide it to all eligible employees, but the amount you advance to each employee should not be higher than their annual contribution, so the amount will vary by employee. Employees who do not have an HSA-eligible plan cannot participate.
HSA Advance funds are made available on the effective date of the HSA Advance amount. Typically, this is on the first day of a Plan Year.
You set the HSA Advance amount per employee. Best practice is to set the amount to either the payroll election for the benefit year or a percentage of the consumer’s payroll election to minimize the risk of employees having an outstanding advance repayment amount at the end of the Plan Year. If you make an HSA Advance amount available in the middle of a Plan Year, it is recommended that the advance amount be equal to or less than the amount of remaining payroll deductions. There will be configuration settings to determine if the advance balance should be included in the auto-pay settings for claims exchange.
The process happens automatically. When an employee makes a payment using their Surency Flex Benefits Card or makes a personal payment and requests a distribution using the Surency Flex mobile app or Member Account, and they have insufficient funds in their HSA and their investment account, funds from the HSA Advance account will then be applied.
Surency will automatically facilitate an electronic fund transfer to deposit into your bank account when a consumer’s payroll deduction or employer contribution is received.
Yes. You can set up an HSA Advance account for a new employee at any time during the benefit Plan Year. The advance amount provided should not be higher than the total of employee contributions that will occur in the remainder of the Plan Year.
Similarly, current employees may decide to adjust their payroll election during the year. If an employee reduces or increases their HSA contribution, it is possible to change the HSA Advance amount for your employee as well through your Employer Account or via a CDEx import record. If the employee has used HSA Advance funds, they will not be able to reduce their HSA contributions to less than their advance repayment amount. (Within the Member Account, there is an optional configuration to reduce the updated advance amount by the outstanding repayment amount to reduce risk having an outstanding balance to repay at the end of the year.)
No. Surency will automatically treat each advance funding contribution as a regular payroll deduction in terms of counting it towards the designated IRS maximum contribution limit. Also, when a contribution is used to repay the advance, it will not be included in the maximum contribution calculation, so it is not double counted.
You will receive an employer notification when there is either an advanced funding need or when advanced funds are being repaid to your bank account. The notification will arrive one business day before the electronic funds transfer.
HSA Advance information is included in the HSA Advance Activity available on demand through your Employer Account. It contains numerous sources of information regarding your employees’ HSA Advance accounts. Also, HSA Advance balances are included in the HSA Account Detail report.
In your Employer Account, a new “Advance Account” tab displays both the available advance balance and activity, and the advance repayment amount and activity.
Fill out the form and a Surency team member will reach out to help you as soon as possible.