TASC - Risky Benefits Podcast S5E16

In this episode of Risky Benefits, Derrick Daniel, Vice President of Large Market at TASC, explores how innovative benefit solutions can boost ROI, engagement, and care outcomes. Derrick highlights TASC’s leadership as the nation’s largest privately held benefit account TPA, serving 80,000+ clients including the federal government.

Key insights include TASC’s universal benefit account platform that unifies multiple benefit accounts, the My Cash program for faster reimbursements and financial flexibility, and differentiated HSA and VEBA strategies. Derrick also explains how TASC’s unique revenue models keep pricing competitive.

The episode offers a clear look at how TASC delivers comprehensive, forward-thinking benefit administration.

To listen in and subscribe to more episodes, visit our website: fbmc.com/podcast.

Transcript

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Hey, thank you for listening in to Risky Benefits, a podcast that informs you on all things benefits. We've got a saying around here, benefits isn't your main business. It's ours.

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Hey everyone. Thank you for listening to Risky Benefits. the podcast where we dive into the complex world of employee benefits, healthcare innovation, and everything in between. Today we have Derek Daniel from Task. We are here to explore how forward thinking organizations can embrace controlled risk benefit packages to boost ROI engagement and care outcomes. That is a mouthful. That said why don't we just start by. Introducing Derek who is here with task, and we're gonna learn a lot about task today. If you're listening to this, you may know who that is and if you don't, cool. It's gonna be a good conversation, so we'll know. Yeah, definitely. Let's start with welcoming Derek. Derek thank you for coming on. And maybe before we get started why don't you just tell us a little bit about yourself. absolutely. And before I get started with that intro, I thought we were just a flex TPA, but you made it sound a lot more than you know what? I think we do, but a little bit about myself. I've been in the industry for roughly about 20 years, dealing predominantly with large employers from the flex side to the broker side, to the enrollment side, and all points in between. I've done this for a while, so I'm very. Used to how these type of employers operate, I do bring a certain core competency at task. I was able to take some experience I actually got here at FBMC and bring it over there and help grow their large market team. So, dealing with some of these public and private employers, and especially some of these more complicated procurements, you get used to phrases like, hurry up and wait. And with hurry up and wait. You know, that's just something that is old hat for me. And then they say, hurry up and go again. But that's a little bit about myself. A little bit about the company task. We are the largest privately held benefit account TPA in the us. We have over 80,000 clients. Uh, often when I mention 80,000 clients, people think I'm pulling their leg, but trust me. We turn nothing down but our collar, we take them from sole proprietorships all the way up to the federal government, who is our largest employer with about 4 million eligibles. You guys might be familiar with the Office of Personnel Management. They have been in the news lately. OPM, that is our largest employer. But really everyone in between from major Fortune 500 companies to state governments, cities, counties, school districts, et cetera. We practice both on the private sector and commercial side. Very cool. Wow. So let's start by talking about definitions. You mentioned briefly hurry up and wait. Yep. Can you expand on that a little bit? So, hurry up and wait. That's something that it's not germane to just public sector, but you'll often see it where they'll release a procurement. And they might release it in July with an award in September or November, right around open enrollment. And so this whole time you've had four months to punter. I submitted the proposal. If I didn't get it there, I'm disqualified. But now that I have it over there are, they're going to afford me the same luxury of being timely and evaluating that response. Understanding there's a big dog, they're gonna do what they do. And once they finally make that award, now you have a couple of months before they go live. And now it's no longer hurry up and wait, it's hurry up and go. So that's something we're used to in our team. I've conditioned tasks to be ready for that. So our deployment my ability to provide delivery assurance management ensures that we meet all our go live dates on target. Very cool. I mean, I think it's kind of funny, Derek, in the consulting world, when we talk to our own consultants, you know, consultants within the industry, a lot of people have a tendency to avoid the public sector because of those factors. Absolutely. Right. So it's obviously makes you feel better when you know somebody does it all the time and they're kind of used to that. The next question we wanted to ask revolved around innovation. Mm-hmm. And I know that's a big buzzword. Um, it's one that we love here at FBMC. It's part of our, uh, our kind of cultural belief statements, our values. Um, how does task innovate? Uh, maybe, maybe talk a little bit through that and, uh. You know, from admin to decision tools or education campaigns, maybe just kind of elaborate on that for us. Yeah, absolutely. So that's a great question, uh, innovation because everyone talks to talk, but are you really walking the walk? Well, at task, we notice, you know, in our space dealing with, you know, benefit accounts like HSAs, hra, FSAs, lifestyle accounts. Then you have, uh, continuation accounts or continuation services, Cobra retiree billing, direct bill, leave of absence. Uh, typically with administrators like us, they're on separate disparate systems, so there is a silo between the benefit accounts and the continuation accounts. Well, we did notice that gap in the market because we had several systems ourselves through different acquisitions we made, but we were able to take. All those separate systems, consolidate them into one universal benefit account that has all the continuations, so the cobra, the direct bill, and the FSAs, HSAs, HRA lifestyle accounts on the same platform. Meaning that you get that technology continuum where you're not dealing with one. Login for this. One, login for that. If you wanted to see your Cobra, it's the same. Uh. Platform that you use for the FSA. So even for the employees, they're used to the look and feel and for the employer groups and even the consultants and brokers, they don't have to worry about separate logins or single sign on to this. Everything's there in one, one space and we've taken something that's really in the e-commerce realm and applied it to the benefits realm with endless al. Very people that are listening who have never heard of task Yeah. TASC are probably thinking, who are you and what do you do now? Absolutely. As you said, you guys have a ton of customers who a lot of people do know, but for those who don't, could you just real quick tell everybody who is task, what is that, TASC, and what do you guys do? Yeah, absolutely. So, task, uh, and our official name, total Administrative Services Corporation. Uh, if you want to kind of think about this and kind of put us in the box, which no one likes to be in a box, but think about FSAs, HSAs, hra, Cobra, uh, leave of absence retiree billing. So not a medical TPA. But the other type of TPA, when I say the other type of TPA, I'm seeing that very affectionately because we're very good at what we do, uh, with the number of clients we have throughout the nation. Uh, you could stack our client list up against anyone. When you think about over eight state governments, uh, we have half of the, uh, top 10 largest school districts. Uh, we have Fortune 50 companies. Uh, so. Definitely, uh, you think about Flex and HSAs cobra, that's when you bring in task. We have a very, uh, good mid-market program for mid-market employers. For smaller employers, we have what we call our micro biz, and for large market we have our large market teams. And then when you think about some of these larger conglomerate or enterprise solutions, we have an enterprise division, so we're able to serve. Every size of employer with that same white glove concierge treatment that they would expect. Uh, we provide account management. We do the administration from the EDI electronic data interchange. So we, uh, do the file exchanges with the different, uh, bin admin systems, enrollment systems, payroll providers. We also pay the claim. So when you think about submitting the reimbursement, getting reimbursed, we do that. We collect the premium payments for the cobra, the retirees, the direct bill, the leave of absence. One thing that most TPAs in our space, uh, do not, uh, have as part of their package is an FMLA solution. We actually do a family medical leave, a administration, and we have our own proprietary FMLA system that we utilize. So we kind of run the gamut of some of those ancillary benefits that you think of that support some of the core benefits that, uh, FBMC, uh, traditionally consults on with its clients. Yeah. That's awesome. So soup to nuts. Yeah. Yes. And I, like I say, soup to nuts. I'm not really sure how soup. Ghost to nut or how that works. So no, you are in the right place because our owner uses it all the time. Okay. So, so that's one of his favorite phrases, odd phrase. Yeah, our owner, uh, we're to look that one up. Alright. Which is, uh, uh, another point I like to talk about just real quick. So we're in the industry, I think back, uh, Rick, when we were running around doing these, we had, you know, 12, 15 competitors. There's been a lot of consolidation, a lot of venture capital money in the industry, and that's kind of dwindled down, you know, the major competitors into just a, just a few. One great thing about task is we've never been sold, uh, the same ownership family. We started at our origin. That's still our ownership family today, the Raky family. So we were tasked yesterday. We're task today will be task tomorrow. You don't have to worry about any type of court to change with tasks being out for sale or being bought up, which we have experienced with a lot of our, uh, newer sales where we're taking over for a company that wasn't the initial award winner. And so when they had that culture clash, of course service, uh, did decline, and then they went out to bid for a new administrator. And when there's confusion in the market, then that definitely benefits us. Awesome. Okay. Okay, so you said endless aisle. What does that mean? Can you tell us about that concept? So endless aisle, and this is where, you know, if I was able to call my own shots, I'll have a picture of our, uh, kind of table of accounts appear right here. But just think of your old periodic table from grade school and instead of elements, think of different benefit accounts. So your traditional tax favor accounts, of course you have the FSAs, HSAs, hras, commuter, uh, things of that nature. But now let's think of more lifestyle oriented accounts. Let's think of a, uh, pet insurance account. Let's think of a workflows account, a virtual home office account. Uh, let's think of a wellness tracking account. A wellness incentive account. I just named like five or six additional accounts. Currently we have over 50 accounts built on this platform. In addition to the traditional and the continuation, the COBRA retiree billing. But what this is to us, a benefit account has three main, uh, components. Uh, three common denominators. It's, uh, money in which is typically some type of payroll deduction, whether from the employee or employer. Then you have a, a request for money, which is usually the claim. Hey. Pay me back, and then you have money out, which is the reimbursement. Everything else that happens takes place behind the scenes and usually dealing with pre or post-tax and tax code. We take care of that for the employer and the employee where they don't have to worry about it. For us, a benefit account is simple. We can build benefit accounts in a matter of a day. You know, just, just tell us what's the reimbursable item. And really the only limitation is your imagination. We can put anything on our universal benefit account, hence the name. And that's what the Endless Owl concept. We're able to continually add different accounts, uh, to this Endless Owl platform. And it's pretty much we can go and it's. They're for perpetuity. You can just keep adding different accounts. So, and you know what I wanna know about that work clothes account. Uh, we have some, with some of our manufacturing, uh, clients where they can, uh, the employee can set aside money to go out and purchase, uh, uniforms or work clothes or even work tools. So, uh, we can get as granular or as wide as you want. We understand a bunch of these, uh, benefits have merchant category codes and most often we can put that on our debit card and we can stack as many accounts on that. Card using separate purses as we need it, we can establish an order of depletion, some type of coordination of benefit to decide which one pays first. If there are some, uh, benefit accounts that kind of, uh, you know, stack up on top of each other, but we're able to use that same, uh, kind of process and, uh, program or configure our platform. That's the great thing about our universal benefit account. It is, uh, totally configurable, uh, and we're able to configure it based on any plan design. The client, consultant broker may have. So I'm not sure I'm following on all of that. Mm-hmm. So I'm just gonna ask a couple of follow up questions. Absolutely. Um, okay. So when you say a universal endless aisle, universal benefits platform program mm-hmm. Is, is that what you, what do you call it? Uh, universal benefit account. Universal benefit account. So I'm envisioning in my head, like I go to a web address. Mm-hmm. And as a participant. And when I go to that web address, I'm not just seeing tax favorite accounts or H-S-A-F-S-A-Q-T-P, uh, or cobra. I'm also seeing other benefits showing up in there. Uh, absolutely that's the way it was designed. Uh, we have what we call a, a tuba. We have a bunch, we're big on acronyms at task, but that's a task universal benefit account where some employers may just give their employees, let's just say, a thousand dollars. And a menu of benefits to, to choose from. And they can divide it up pre post tax. It might be a tuition repayment account, a student loan, uh, account, uh, it could be a crisis account. Uh, so any type of thing like that we're able to build on the platform. Now you can limit what your employees see, so if you only want it, you know, traditional accounts or maybe one just catch all lifestyle account, we can definitely do that. But if you wanted that full experience where we would sell pretty much UBA, what we call universal benefit account. We can have a menu of accounts and for at a certain threshold, an employer can have as many account offerings as they wanted to offer to their participants. All built into the package. Well, I guess what I'm trying to figure out is, is I enroll mm-hmm. At my place of employment and I have medical, dental, vision. Let's say I have universal life long, let's say I've got cancer, short-term disability, long-term disability, and then I've got the F-S-A-H-S-A, the task options. Yep. How do, how do, if I enroll in a, in a, a plethora of those options mm-hmm. And then I select the task, FSA option. Yes. How does that Okay, so what we transfer our employer as the consultant, my employer's going to transfer that information. We're gonna transfer that information to task. Task is gonna create a universal account. Mm-hmm. Now how I'm not, I'm not getting from, from that point to what you're describing. Okay. So can you walk me through that? So think of it, let's just, uh, let's think of something that's routine and customary for everyone. Let's say an FSA, you can enroll through task, you can enroll through the employer. If you guys have, I know you guys have your own enrollment, uh, system that you can, uh, deploy in the market, right? And so we can have that, uh, FSA, but we can also have. Let's just call it a lifestyle account. Most of our competitors, they don't get that granular with breaking down workflows, account work, tools, accounts. They just call it a lifestyle account and they can make it whatever they want to. For simplification, let's just call ours a lifestyle account. We can have that bevy of lifestyle accounts on there as options for the employee to enroll in. If they do enroll in it, then uh, the information will get exchanged depending on the sophistication of the employer, either through some type of data exchange, or they can do a direct upload in our platform. It's a separate enrollment. Uh, it, it's a separate enrollment, uh, unless the employer just wanted to give it to everybody. So some employers. Pretty much a, a lifestyle account is just a glorified HRA. It may, it may not have health components to it, but when the HRA, you can play math scientists with it. Yeah. You can pretty much design an HRA to work any way you want to. I'm not suggesting that for the audience, because it makes it hard to administer and put it on the card. When you look at, you know, co-insurance and all these other stuff, it's like a defined benefit. In essence, the employer is saying, we're setting aside X amount of funds. Mm-hmm. For each person. To go onto to the task account and select how you would like to utilize those funds, uh, post-tax, uh, most often, uh, those are post-tax when you think about most of your lifestyle accounts, uh, there, and I won't geek out with impute income's and all that other stuff. Yeah. But, you know, there are some things that happened behind the scenes that are a little different than some of your traditional accounts. There was some, uh, further clarification on a few of those, uh, lifestyle benefits, uh, with the recent legislation that just passed at the. Point in time of this taping. It might be a little older, but with the, uh, one big beautiful bill, they did provide further clarification on a couple of those lifestyle accounts. Uh, one big thing we're big on is, uh, giving accounts, uh, what we do for the federal government. That's the largest charitable giving campaign in the world. We're the administrator for the Give back program, which allows employees to use our platform to find whatever that 5 0 1 c that they want to, uh, go ahead and Yep. Contribute to through our platform. And we do that for the federal government. So then are you pulling that out of on a payroll deduction basis? Correct. So that they can do those donations? Yes. Do you also provide some form of, uh, tax. Reporting on that so that they can give it to their accountant at the end of the year for tax purposes. They, they do get the tax reporting and we actually have, uh, you know, lobbyists on the hill trying to make this a pre-tax, uh, thing. So where would be that would cool. Yeah. Uh, what we would call a, uh, flexible giving account. Yeah. That's awesome. So that's great. We've been lobbying for it, you know, we, we do it for OPM. We think it's a great benefit if you research task that's TASC. Probably the first thing that'll come up is just what we do as far as philanthropy. We're real big on giving back, not just to uh, our community where we're headquartered, but to the community where our clients are served. And so, uh, that's just one thing that's built into our ethos. Very. I love that, Derek. That's super cool, man. Thanks for sharing. Yeah. So real quick, I looked up soup to nuts. Okay. The origin, so it's from multi-course meals. Came from the 19th century where they began with soup and ended with nuts. They didn't start with nuts. Nope. Like I feel like began with soup. An airplane. They always bring the nuts first. I was thinking something with cars. I don't know why, but, yep. Soup to nuts. Nuts. Our last. Apparently. Why would you do that? I a pallet cleanser. I don't know. That's so fascinating to me. So this is the part of the podcast I can carve out and send to my owner. I can't send him the whole thing. Then I feel like it's an evaluation going on, then I'm being judged. This is in it, my brother, this is in it. So hey listen, this is gonna be good. Um, okay, cool. Well, let me give you the next question. Okay. So, um, tell us about what you guys are doing in the HSA space. Okay. You know. Obviously the HRA space is, I mean, highly committal Yes. On the employer side, right? Yes. Because they're funding, essentially that effort. HSA space. I, as an individual employee, you can elect it. Yeah. I love it. Mm-hmm. Because I think, I think, honestly, when I think through Derek. Long-term care. Mm-hmm. To me, NHSA is the, the way, a way to fund long-term care. Right? It's a financial investment tool that has tax favored components. It rolls over, I can assign it to my wife as a beneficiary. Yes. Uh, there's a lot of reasons why people should focus on this. Now, I get. That people freak out about the high deductible health plans. Yes. That tied to them. Um, but, and I'm sure you can kind of maybe elaborate on this, there are a lot of ways employers, uh, with the help of people like task can create it in an advantageous way that, that, that reduces any risk that somebody perceives that they're taking on. Absolutely. Doesn't always get rid of it, but it helps mitigate some of it. Maybe talk to us, like talk to us about what you guys are doing in that space. Absolutely. And you're right about that. There are certain subsets out there in the market. Uh, sometimes it's, uh, based on geography, but they're not, uh, big proponents of the HSA. We get it. You talked about being a, uh, pathway to long-term care. Um, I would actually challenge that a little bit because, uh, HSAs often we think about the healthy individuals. Mm-hmm. And really when you're thinking about services tasking offer, and you're thinking more so toward long-term care. I may say, let's look at that Veeva route that funded HRA, which is, you'll see often for retirees or kind of, uh, those OPE type benefits. Yeah. Uh, and we actually offer that as well. And so I'll kind of distinguish that when I talk about our HSAs. But what we're doing in the HSA market, uh, we do understand. There's a lot of money in HSAs. There's a bunch of assets, there's interest, you know, there's investments. Uh, and so what we've decided to do to take the financial valuation out of it, we are providing all HSAs free of charge to our clients. Zero fees, so we're not charging any fees. Of course, you're gonna ask me, well, Derek, how do you make money? We make money off the cash balance on the assets, so the interest on the assets, but we're placing HSAs for$0. So now you don't have to worry about your participants employees paying because we're not gonna nickel and dime them with banking fees. Uh, oftentimes you might see other administrators, they may say$0 on the admin fee. But every transaction the employee does,'cause it is a personal bank account. They're getting charged, they're getting charged a withdrawal fee, or they're getting charged to, uh, a transfer fee. Uh, some, some TPAs in our space, they actually charge investment fees. We don't do that. Of course, some mutual funds do have a fee, and if it is, the, uh, participant is made aware of that prior to investing. But let's, uh, continue down that path with, uh, HSAs and, uh, Vivas. So, uh, most administrators in our space. They have one fund lineup for investment, and you will see no delta or variance between when they sell Aviva to when they place an HSA. Well at task, we understand you're looking at employees who are at different spectrums of their employee life cycle. Uh, the viba participants are either retired or saving or getting ready to retire, where the HSAs, uh, participants tend to be a little more healthier. We don't think one fund lineup kind of, uh, would benefit, you know, both. It's not a one size fits all approach. So we have a custom lineup. For our Viba employers versus our HSA employers, where we're able to put some custom funds in there based off of whatever type of, uh, risk they want to associate with their investment, whether moderate, uh, a little more aggressive or very conservative, or if you just want to guaranteed rate of return, you keep it in your cash account. We're gonna pay, uh, each participant's, uh, 25 basis points regardless of what they have in cash. They could have$1, they could have, uh,$2,000 in there, but they're getting that, uh, 0.25 a PR on their cash account. So that's a great thing there. And of course, if they play the play the market, then uh, of course we can't make any, uh, any guarantees of what's gonna happen. That's kind of at their own risk. However, what we do. We provide the maximum amount of independent research available to those participants. When you think about things such as an investment toolkit, a Morningstar report, uh, e prospectus, uh, what we do, we utilize, uh, char, uh, Charles swab a retirement technology system to allow, to give them access to those investment accounts. They wanna go out and again, play the market, but they can just treat it like a traditional, uh. Tax favored account, uh, and just let the assets build up on their cash account and they're getting those 25 basis points, uh, that that's guaranteed to'em. So with the HSA, I do think it's a, a great thing. Uh, I've noticed, uh, some questions on some of your past podcasts about, you know, what's a little bit overrated in the, in the industry. I think with, sometimes with HSAs, especially this message is being driven by some of the larger medical carriers, is that. Technically they're integrated. You know, integrated is a very loose term. What does that necessarily mean? Just because we're not aligned with a carrier doesn't mean we don't integrate with all the carriers just like they do. So I think oftentimes you'll, you'll hear that, and that's a barrier to someone coming in, getting an HSA that's decoupled from the medical carrier. But one of our value edges is that we, uh, are carrier agnostic. Uh, if you have this carrier today. And next year you have this carrier. We'll work with both of them. We often see, and I think we've had some uh, cases with you guys where one carrier left and they took their ball and went home. With, with tasks, you don't have to worry about that. We'll work with anyone. We play nice in the sandbox with all carriers out there. Uh, as far as integrations are concerned, we integrate with anybody who will integrate with us and uh, you know, that's what you see with the HSAs. Again, that's a trend that's going, uh, with the administration. There is a renewed push on HSAs, so we do see it becoming more prominent with more employers offering the HSA and it's definitely something where we've taken kind of that financial decision out as far as admin fees are concerned. But when you just really think about a great product, we utilize an independent, uh, advisor for the investment and investment advisor, and they go in and look at the fund lineup quarterly, uh, any fund that's underperforming gets, gets put on the watch list. If it underperforms for, uh, multiple quarters, we're gonna go ahead and replace it. But that is independent of tasks just to keep the integrity of those benefits. So, thank you guys. So, so maybe. We've, we've, we've thrown some, uh, acronyms out there. Mm-hmm. So maybe let's just take a second, um, for those that are listening, uh, HSA Yep. Health Savings Account. Okay. And Viva? Voluntary Employee Benefits Association. Okay. And you're saying Veeva is, are more relevant to people who are retiring or heading towards retirement. I, I, that's the way I would use it in Veeva. You would hear it called in. Again, it depends on geography. Some people call it a Veeva. You might hear retiree health savings accounts attached. They call it a funded HRA. FHRA. When I was, uh, here at, uh, FBMC, we used to call it an investment, HRA. There are several different names in it, but with the viba, uh, all, if it's public sector, you'll hear it as a Section one 15 Trust. So several different names, but usually employer funded. Uh, employer funded has to be employer funded the well. The Veeva, you can have several different types of, uh, contributions, whether sick leave, uh, you can get pretty creative, but it is governed by, uh, the IRS. So there are certain guidelines you have to play with, but you can get pretty creative. You can use it as a severance package. Uh, and I won't. Geek out on Vivas because that is a complicated, uh, conversation, but, uh, it is, uh, taken from the employee, but there's certain parameters as far as what the employer can do, treating everybody the same with the Viva and, uh, how you choose to distribute any type of, uh, you know, contributions. Earlier I said QTB. Yeah, QTB, which is, uh, a term I learned here at FBMC. FBMC may be the only, uh, TPA that still uses it, but qualified transportation benefit, AKA commuter benefits, AKA parking and transit benefits. AKA, the bike benefit went off the table and it's no longer pre-tax. Uh, we were, it was getting ready to get sunset and come back in, but I think they just provided some clearer, uh, definition on it with the, uh, recent legislation. And then FSA flexible spending account. That's the one that it's kind of use it or lose it with the, with the exception of what?$500 rollover? Um, about six 50 now, maybe a little bit higher with this open enrollment. And that is a important distinction. Yeah. Use it or lose it used to be a barrier for people participating. Yeah. And now, whatever that carryover is, if your, uh, employer, uh, or client, you know, offers a carryover, not just the, uh, grace period provision. And employees should at least have that amount because it's gonna carry over from year to year regardless. So even if you didn't do the full maximum amount, which if, uh, you know your situation can afford it, I would always advocate to take it to the max because you're gonna have those expenses and it's just not going to the doctor. There are so many things you can spend FSA funds, uh, on and it continues to open up. I mean, I've seen some, uh, recent changes as far as some. Uh, electrical equipment, uh, that can, uh, do some monitoring that you can use it on. Right. But there's so many things you can use it on, but at least elect up to the carryover amount of your employer because you could never lose that money. Well, and as an employer, FICA savings are fica. You get the FICA savings. Absolutely. As an employee, there's so many acronyms. Haika, when you were res when you were responding to the acronym question, you said AKA. Okay. Three times. Yeah. Sorry. Anyway, just we all know I, okay. If you wanna bring it home in the airport, traveling here, there was an AKA, uh, convention, which is some, are you serious? Oh, that's funny. So, so everyone was walking through the airport with their pink and green on, this is Bupa. Yes. Not as. So funny. Well, so the only other one I probably didn't throw out, and there are more, uh, but the DFSA, the, the D-C-F-S-A, some people call it dcap, uh, dependent care, FSA one. Now there's one acronym that, uh, really this, I'm gonna throw this one at you. Uh, guys, we've talked about HRA. Okay, so, uh, what does HRA stand for Health Reimbursement Arrangement? Most people think account, some people say agreement, but Rick, you get the, uh, hero cookie for. So, but yeah, most people think account, but, but you're right. Uh, which we know, uh, you know, if you're score at home is a, uh, group medical plan people, people are lumping into an FSA, but it's much more than that. Yeah. Yeah. It's, I there, I mean, honestly. All of these are beautiful arrangements for employers to have in place for i a savings to reduce tax liability even for the individual employee. Right? Yeah. I mean, these are things that are smart. And actually one of the things you said, Derek, which I think is a brilliant idea, is look, if you know what the rollover amounts are, at a minimum do that at a, at a minimum, right? Yep. You're, you're helping out the employer from a FICA perspective. Um, you're, you're helping out your own tax liability, um, and you're not gonna lose it, and you're most likely going to use it. You're going to use it if you have a kid with braces or who's gonna, you're going to blow through that so fast. If you're with tax, call me, I'll tell, you'll tell you how to use that money. Yeah. Um, so anyway. Okay, great. I, I didn't wanna like take too much time, but I just wanna make sure people listening'cause,'cause you know we, when you're going through life and you sit down to enroll, you may see something that says FSA and I don't even know how good a job that some employers out there do it, do it communicating. What is that? Not at all. You'll see participation rates anywhere, right? 10, 15%. The DCF is a. Usually it's 2%. Yeah. Um, and they just raised the actual, uh, maximum for the first time since the eighties on the, uh, D-C-F-S-A, you know, news flash, it went from 5,000 to 7,500, on which it should because it's so expensive. It's so expensive. Spending 11, 12,$13,000 a year more for, for, uh, daycare expenses. It's well behind inflation. So, you know, it should be a lot higher. Well, daycare, are you going? It's only 11. I know. I, well, well, fortunately for me, we didn't have to do that. Daniella has. Has taken that on for the family, but. I know it's, it's more way more expensive than what the allotment is. It's way more expensive. Yeah. Yeah. And back in the day, it used to be all paper, uh, with tasks you can actually pay for your dependent care, FSA with the task card if the, uh, daycare provider accepts the card. So that kind of takes some of that, you know, filing those manual claims out of it. Uh, and I understand that we're not just talking to, uh, mid-size and large employers. But we have an affinity for the smaller employers. So you might hear things like a Erra or a i a, which these are some of the things that are there. It's coming out more. Yeah. It, it's coming out more. And we're starting to hear a lot of talk about the IRAs for some larger employers now, as it's definitely a way for, you know, employers to put some control back into the employee's hand as how they spend their, uh, you know, their benefit money. Yeah. There's a lot of. Interesting nuances that employers probably don't know. And I, when I, I have always been asked like, well Rick, uh, okay, I'm a small employer, is an HSA really appropriate for me? What's interesting is, is I think companies like task, and you can correct me if I'm wrong here, probably put a very high emphasis on smaller employers. We do more so than people would realize because they need it probably more than, than say other people. That's our bread and butter. Right. And when I think about that, it's like. I don't think people realize that take a small employer, as long as the small employer offers a high deductible health plan, whether an employee takes that or not, it it. You cannot take it, but still be eligible for the health savings account. Absolutely. All that has to actually happen is the employer has to offer it. Yeah. So, and we can do an auto open, even just on the, uh, high deductible health plan employees. I don't know that people really truly understand some of those nuances, which someone like Derek could cue you up on. But as an employer, if you're listening to this, you know, if that didn't cause you to say, huh, because in small. Employers. Obviously recruiting new people and retention Yes. Is one of the hardest things they've got. Going and having big budgets for benefits packages is also complicated. Yes. So, you know, those types of things are important for people to understand because it's a way for you to get strategic about. Okay, how do I, how do I create a more compelling benefits package? So that's just a little nugget I'll throw out there for anyone listening to, to, to maybe draw some more people towards Derek. Um, that said, let's, you know, I know Kyle has the next question. Yeah. So I know we, we've talked about a lot, but do you have anything else that task is doing that differentiates you? Yeah, that's where I, I really like to roll my sleeves up so every company comes in and they talk about, you know, innovation and this and that, but what really differentiates us, what's something that we do that no one else, uh, on the planet does. And that's what we call my cash. This allows me to definitively state that task pace claims faster than anyone else in the market within a matter of hours as opposed to days, and we make direct deposit seem old school. Now, I know that's a, uh, kind of big, grandiose statement, but let me explain what my cash is historically for A-H-S-A-F-S-A-H-R-A TPA alike task. When someone submits a manual claim, they get reimbursed either as a direct deposit or a paper check in the mail. Mm-hmm. With that task, we take that a step further. We're able to take that same reimbursement that you would normally get as a direct deposit or a paper check and put it back on that task debit card. And so with that, um, you might pause, I ask a couple up my nose. Okay. Okay. I thought I had you, both of you guys kept doing this. I just feel like I have a booger coming out my nose. Okay. Alright. I was like, whoa, time out here. Okay. Alright. You gonna punch me back in? So at that's gonna be in it. Okay. I think I manifested now Rich been doing it for, I was like, wow, look at my nose and, and I have my phone right here looking at my face like I don't see it. But that's. With the my cash, we're able to take that, uh, we're able to, let's, let's get the train back on the tracks here. We're able to take that outta pocket reimbursement, put it right back on that same debit card that you would normally use to house your payroll deductions, but on a separate cash purse called My Cash. So now we've taken that$25 bu. Put it back on the card. It's not co-mingled with the payroll deductions. So everything's on the up and up as far as compliance. But now with that$25 only, you can go out and spend it on anything at the gas station, at, uh Publix, at Walmart, wherever you might go, e-commerce at the restaurant. Uh, and the way to kind of bring it home, let's just use a real life scenario. So let's say you're at CVS or Walgreens. Uh, you're purchasing your prescription, you are using your tax favorite account, your FSA. Flexible spending account or your health savings account to make that purchase for the prescriptions. But you know, they get you with those impulse buys, you'll see a Snickers bar, a uh, Coca-Cola, Sprite. Let's say you get that Sprite and you have it up there. Typically an employee would have to pay for the prescriptions with one card and then pay for that, uh, other thing with their own money, whether cash or another debit card or credit card. Well, with my cash. Remember the card is a smart card, so it's smart enough to determine that, okay, the Snickers bar should come from the mike ass bucket, and the prescription should come from the F-S-A-H-S-A eligible, uh, payroll deductions. It's all done on one swipe. The participant doesn't have to do anything unique at the point of sale. Swipe it and forget it. It's all itemized at the point of sale for the participant. Now I have to ask you a question mm-hmm. Because you know, the listeners are, are, are thinking what I'm thinking. Mm-hmm. Is there some kind of tie to their personal bank account in case there aren't any funds under the My cash? Like what happens if, if they don't, if they buy that? Mm-hmm. Candy thing. And, and they don't have money on it. It sounds like a foreign object to Rick. I know. Rick Candy. I don't eat those candy. Rick goes to the to Brady, uh, church. So what are we doing? Yeah. Eating a grass flavor bark. So. I don't have, you know, because it doesn't go nuts. It's a bag, cashier. Okay, there you go. What happens? Okay, so, so what happens? So it's not tied to the bank account, but it will exhaust that, that balance. So let's say you purchased something that was$10 and you only have$5 in my cash. So, um, most point of sales machines are able to just determine and exhaust it. Some, uh, employee needs to know how much is on their account and say, well just run it for five and I'll pay the rest. Now, what you're describing, Rick, is something that's, uh, very interesting. Uh, you should get with our, uh, chief, uh, biz dev because we actually have a. Card decline protection, uh, on our roadmap. And, uh, it gets us closer to a bank. So there's some different regulations involved. Okay. Where we could tie it to a personal bank account as almost a third payer. That way you don't have those, uh, embarrassing dings or I'm gonna throw something out there. Mm-hmm. And it's gonna sound crazy, but do what Starbucks does. Right, like a, like Starbucks app, all you do is you take money and you put money on that, on that card. And so that's what we're, we're looking at. But here's what happens is is Starbucks just taking all that money that's sitting there and they're investing and making interest off of it. And so Starbucks is killing it below the line. Economics, there you go. Other fee revenue. But what happens is, is the reason it works is because they've created a a point system. So I get free stuff after so many purchases unless I'm willing to let my money sit here. And so we're working on, uh, currency converters, uh, we're working on Apple, Google Pay. Uh, so there's some things that on our roadmap. Yeah, uh, we see it with the tracking. Uh, we're, uh, back office for a few of those. Uh, big wellness tracking where you earn points and you can spend it not just on health and welfare type deals, but also on. Shoes from certain stores and things like that. So that is something that, uh, we are working with the, uh, you know, technology to incorporate into our universal benefit account. But no, that was, I mean, we have something called my cash too, that we're coming out with where we'll pay the participants' interest on that cash balance. You mentioned the other fee revenue, Rick, of course, we're sitting on money, so we're gonna get paid. Yeah. But this allows us to propose very employer friendly admin fees. I talk about the$0 on the HSAs, right? Typically, I think you guys know from us quoting, we will rarely lose on price. Uh, there may be a, you know, someone may have a better proposal than us, or they may have a better experience with a particular employer, but, but with the pricing, because of the other fee revenue, then we're able to be made whole and hit our margins without necessarily passing that on to the employer as an admin fee or actually to the participant because we're not gonna charge them. Okay. Alright, it's time for our lightning round. Woo. So, task me anything you've got five seconds or less to answer each. Okay. Task me Anything. Get it? Okay. I'm, I'm still catching up. Uh, all right. So who's No mustard? Are you asking the questions? We can go back. Okay. So ready task. I'm sorry guys. All right. I'm, I'm there. Task me anything. Let's go, let's go. Biggest compliance buzzword of 2025 So far. Biggest complain? Uh, ICRA. Okay. I mean, I don't know, I couldn't say pop, but we sell a bunch of pop plans if you want pop. And you want your, uh, is that like a soda, like a coat premium only plan? Right? How that, alright, which benefit trend is overplayed? Which, uh, I think I talked about that with the, uh, HSA integrations and with the medical carrier, I think it's overplayed and over emphasized. Okay. All right. Um, favorite thing about tasks Tech stack? Um, the endless Owl concept in the My Cash Employees question you hear all the time. Employees question. Um, where's my money at? They, they, they think we are keeping their money. Yeah. You go out there like, we keep your money. It's, it's ruthless family direct, by the way, finish the sentence. Great Benefits are like. Ooh. I had to self-police myself. Great. Benefits are like, uh, waking up on Christmas Day. Okay, I like that. Good. Save. Christmas of July. Open enrollment is one word. Question mark in one word. What two? Good times because we get paid from participation. So anytime we get a chance to raise participation, that's a good thing around these parties. Okay. Wellness perk you personally want in your benefits package? Uh, gym benefit Really? How good is that benefit? They better pay my whole annual, Jim, you know what I'm saying? Gimme$150. That's the, uh, that's the plan. Design that half a month. FSAs or HSAs. Pick one for a desert island. Uh, that's HSAs. Okay. More flexible, like yoga on a beach. Anyway, what's next in benefits? One wild prediction. Ai ai. Yeah, definitely. For sure. Alright, well Derek, this has been fun. Uh, absolutely save one last question for you. Alright. Is there anything else you want our listeners to know? Um, what I want your listeners to know is that, uh, I'm gonna turn it around just to let them know. I think FBMC is a great company. You guys, uh, have always, uh. Selected the best, uh, vendor choice, uh, for your clients. Uh, we see some brokers, some consultants out there in the market playing favorites. Uh, we don't see that with FBMC. There've been cases where we've proposed we didn't win. We do understand it'll go out to be it again, or you'll do it direct marketing. So I just want the, uh, listeners to know that if this is your first time or if you've been sitting on the fence and been thinking about whether or not you should get F-B-M-C-A-A chance. Believe me, their tenure with their clients and their persistency rates are better than anyone else in the industry. And I'm just thankful you guys allowed me to come up here and talk about tasks. So thank you. This was great. I look forward to possibly doing it in the future again. Thank you, Derek. I appreciate you coming. Uh. Thank you to our listeners. If any of you have any questions, please contact us or look for information on our homepage@www.fbmc.com. I'm gonna take a wild guess that it's www.tc.com online.com. Oh goodness. There it is. TSC online com. It's some other TCS out there, so that's okay. Somebody stole the domain name, different acronym. Just wanna make the plug for you and remember. To listen and subscribe on any podcast app.