HSA assets climb 19% on fee cuts the law didn't deliver

Morningstar's tenth annual HSA Landscape Report, released Wednesday, counts total health savings account assets up 19% in 2025 on $14.9 billion of net financial inflows, a market roughly four times the size it was in 2009. The 11 providers the report tracks gave a blunter read on the policy story, telling Morningstar they have limited evidence that the One Big Beautiful Bill Act's expanded eligibility has so far done much for participation or assets.

The growth is coming from the price sheet and the menu instead, where six providers earned Above Average ratings on their spending accounts — First American Bank, HealthEquity, HSA Bank, Lively, Saturna and UMB — and three, Associated Bank, HealthEquity and Saturna, on the investment side, while seven of the 11 now offer a brokerage window. Fidelity held its High assessment on better interest rates, no maintenance fee and low overall costs, while HSA Bank earned a High rating for its investment account for the first time after eliminating its investment threshold, and Greg Carlson, a senior manager research analyst at Morningstar, said in the release that an increasingly competitive industry, with lower fees and stronger investment options, is benefiting account holders.

The investment half of the HSA is the half that keeps not arriving. PSCA's 2026 survey found 83% of eligible employees contributing and only 22% of them investing their balances, a gap that frames Wednesday's number: nineteen percent asset growth on a base where four in five employees never buy a fund is largely cash parked in a spending account, and improved provider ratings are, in part, a measure of how cheap that parking has become.

Fee compression is real, and it is the half of this market a plan adviser can actually act on. Dropping a maintenance charge or an investment threshold widens the door to the brokerage window, but an HSA that has to be actively opted into likely keeps most balances in cash, and the sponsor's default, not the provider's price, is what decides whether the window gets used. That is why Carlson's advice — weigh cost, investment quality and account features before choosing — lands on employers rather than participants, and why the spread the report keeps documenting across interest rates, thresholds and window access is one only a diligent sponsor can arbitrage.

The asset total will matter less in next year's report than whether the share of HSA holders who invest finally moves off 22%, the point at which 19% growth stops being a story about cash.