Migrating from HSA Bank to Lively HSA with Charles Schwab
Written by Miles Kellum
Updated at November 11th, 2024
Table of Contents
For clients who were previously with HSA Bank / Charles Schwab for investments, below is the process to open a new HSA at Lively and then resume investing at Charles Schwab.
Open a new HSA at Lively
- Navigate to https://livelyme.com/ and click the “Open a New Account” button.
- Choose “I'm an individual eligible for an HSA and not enrolling through my employer” option.
- Follow the guided process to create a username and password and open the account.
- In the questionnaire indicate yes that you have an HSA with another provider, and yes you want to transfer funds to Lively.
Open an HSA Investment Brokerage account through Lively's partnership with Charles Schwab
Summary instructions:
- From the Lively Dashboard, click the 3-lines menu to open more options.
- From the Investments screen, click on “Get started” for the Schwab Health Savings Brokerage Account option.
- Follow the steps with Lively and Charles Schwab to open your account.
- When you receive your new Charles Schwab account number (XXXX-XXXX) make sure to write that account number down and send it to your MLW Planning team via the MLW Portal.
Click here to expand for more detailed step-by-step instructions on opening the Schwab account
Now it's time to move funds over!
Once your Lively HSA account and Schwab investment account are both opened, there are two steps to moving funds over:
- Move the investments over in a Schwab-to-Schwab in-kind transfer.
- Move any cash in the HSA Bank account over to the Lively account.
Create an In-Kind transfer from HSA Bank to Lively
Follow these instructions form Lively for how to request an In-Kind Transfers for Charles Schwab.
If you run into any issues setting this up on their website, you can also call the Lively support team at 888-576-4837.
A few notes:
- We have confirmed that HSA Bank supports ACATS, so you can disregard that warning.
- You will need the account number for both your new Lively Schwab account and your old HSA Bank Schwab account.
- Remember: you can access both of these by going to https://client.schwab.com, clicking on each HSA account and going to Statements & Tax Forms tab to view the account number on your most recent statement.
- Once submitted, they will tell you it may take up to 4-8 weeks to process but we're anecdotally seeing that the Schwab-to-Schwab transfers are going much faster, in as little as 7 days.
Transfer cash balance from HSA Bank to Lively
If you have a cash balance in your HSA Bank account (not at Schwab) you can follow these instructions from Lively for how to request a Trustee-to-Trustee transfer.
A few notes:
- The Trustee-to-Trustee option is generally the most desirable transfer option to use.
- It will warn of a 4-8 week processing time but anecdotally we are seeing this process much faster.
- There are multiple “HSA Bank” options on the dropdown when selecting your provider, choose the one that simply says “HSA Bank” and nothing else (not “Cigna HSA Bank” etc)
- For fastest process, you will need your HSA Bank account number (not your Charles Schwab HSA Bank number), you can retreive that by logging in to HSA Bank.
- Lively will then process the request and contact your HSA provider. Once they have completed that portion, you will receive an email with a link to E-sign the required disclosures and authorizations for the trustee-to-trustee transfer.
You will now see status updates in the Pending Transfers screen at Lively until completed:
