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HealthEquity, Inc. (HQY)

Q3 2017 Earnings Call· Tue, Dec 6, 2016

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Welcome to HealthEquity’s Third Quarter of Fiscal 2017 Earnings Conference Call. Please note that this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Richard Putnam, Investor Relations. Go ahead, Mr. Putnam.

Richard Putnam

Management

Thank you, Latif. Good afternoon and welcome to HealthEquity’s third quarter earnings conference call. My name is Richard Putnam, Investor Relations for HealthEquity. With me today, we have Jon Kessler, President and CEO; Dr. Steve Neeleman, Vice Chairman and Founder of the company; and Darcy Mott, our Chief Financial Officer participating with us on the call today. Before I turn the call over to Jon, I would like to remind you of a couple of things. First, a copy of today’s earnings release and accompanying financial information can be accessed on our Investor Relations website, ir.healthequity.com. And secondly, we remind those listening to our call that today’s discussion will include forward-looking statements, including predictions, expectations, estimates or other information that might be considered forward-looking. Throughout today’s discussion, we will present some important factors relating to our business, which could affect those forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause our actual results to differ materially from statements made here today. As a result, we caution you against placing undue reliance on these forward-looking statements and we encourage you to review the discussion of these factors and other risks that may affect our future results or market price of our stock that are detailed in our annual report on Form 10-K filed with the SEC on March 31, 2016, along with any subsequent periodic or current reports. Finally, we are not obligating ourselves to revise or update these forward-looking statements in light of new information or future events. With those reminders out of the way, I will turn the call over to Mr. Jon Kessler.

Jon Kessler

Management

Thanks, Richard. Thanks everyone for joining us. I have a few hopefully pithy remarks about our third quarter operating results and then we will turn the call over to Steve and Darcy. We will have a brief wrap up and then we will open the lines for questions. So, turning to said pithy comments, HealthEquity continued to deliver strong results for the third quarter and year-to-date of fiscal ‘17, with substantial growth during the third quarter in the four key metrics of our business, which as I am sure everyone listening knows, our revenue, adjusted EBITDA, HSA membership and assets under management or AUM. The pace of revenue growth remains strong, with revenues up 42% year-over-year in the third quarter to $43.4 million. Adjusted EBITDA outgrew revenue as margins widened, increasing 47% year-over-year to $14.5 million or 34% of revenue compared to 32% in the prior year’s third quarter. And likewise, HSA Members grew 48% year-over-year to $2.4 million versus 45% year-over-year growth in the comparable period a year ago. And total AUM grew 59% year-over-year to $4.3 billion at the end of the quarter versus 47% year-over-year growth in the year ago period. Over the last 12 months, HealthEquity has grown AUM by $1.6 billion. So, the top line continue to show significant growth on a much larger base and profitability accelerated as did HSA and AUM growth as the team continues to build the base of a strong profitable business for the long-term. Now, I would like to turn the call over to Steve to speak about our third quarter sales activities and industry trends. I will address thoughts on the impacts to our business of the 2016 elections in my closing remarks. I give you, Dr. Steve Neeleman.

Steve Neeleman

Management

Thanks, Jon. HealthEquity’s year-over-year growth in total HSAs, AUM and AUM, as Jon discussed, continues to roughly double the market. Our sales team continues to up its game in partnership with our network of health plans and large employers to break records and to outpace our competitors. Our team helped members open 88,686 new HSAs in the third quarter that was up 20% year-over-year. HealthEquity members grew our AUM by $83 million in the third quarter, up 37% year-over-year. And year-to-date, new HSA openings are up 24% and members have added 62% more AUM over the last 9 months than they did in the first 9 months of last year. This sales growth is on top of the HSAs and AUM that the team successfully transitioned from M&T Bank’s platform during the first quarter of fiscal 2017. Studies published since our last earnings call confirm that market growth remains strong as the shift to HSA qualified health plans continue. I would like to focus for a few minutes on a study called the Kaiser Family Foundation and Health Research Educational Trust 2016 Employee Health Benefits Survey. This was released in September. I will refer to this as the Kaiser survey for the rest of my remarks. This study surveys over 1,000 businesses on an annual basis and focuses on the estimated 150 million Americans who receive health insurance from their employers. The key findings from this report that we believe signal important impacts for our business moving forward include the following findings: first, the percentage of employees that are now enrolled in HSA qualified plans has reached a new high of 19%, up from 14% just 2 years ago. Also, more firms are offering HSAs than ever before. The percentage of all firms offering HSA qualified plans rose to 24%…

Darcy Mott

Management

Thanks, Steve. I will discuss our results on both a GAAP and a non-GAAP basis. A reconciliation of non-GAAP results that we discuss here to their nearest GAAP measurement are provided in the press release that was published earlier today. We will first review our third quarter and year-to-date financial results for fiscal 2017 and then I will update our guidance for the full fiscal year 2017. We had another strong quarter adding to our first half. Overall, our revenue for the third quarter grew 42% to year-over-year to $43.4 million. Breaking down the revenue into our three components, we continue to see growth in each of service, custodial and the interchange revenue during the quarter and the first 9 months of the year. Service revenue grew 24% year-over-year to $18.8 million in the third quarter. Service revenue as a percentage of total revenue declined to 43% in the quarter, down from 50% of total revenue that it represented in the third quarter of last year as custodial and interchange revenue streams became more predominant. Service revenue growth was attributable to a 49% year-over-year increase in average HSAs during the quarter partially offset by a 17% decrease in service revenue per average HSA. We continued to expect the year-over-year decrease for the full year FY ‘17 to be around 15% level as previously guided. We also expect that future service revenue per HSA decreases will return to a more historical annual levels in the 5% to 10% range as the factors that impacted this year play themselves out. Custodial revenue was $15 million in the third quarter, representing an increase of 64% year-over-year. The driving factor for this growth was a 59% growth in total AUM. The $600 million of growth in total AUM during the first nine months of…

Jon Kessler

Management

Thank you, Darcy and thank you, Steve. Before opening up the call, let me try to address the question most frequently asked of us since the November 8 elections, which is what might the changes in Washington mean to HSAs and for HealthEquity and its investors. And I’ll address it as follows. If the Clinton healthcare agenda would have been about showing up what hasn’t performed to expectations in Obama Care, the Trump and Republican Congress’ agenda is about encouraging what is working in workplace health benefits and in the States. And as is clear from the research Steve described, HSAs are working. So we expect to see HSAs promoted in the executive branch and/or through legislation throughout the Trump administration. Plausible areas for action include the following. First, making more insurance plans HSA eligible so that more Americans can open HSAs. For example, according to the Kaiser survey Steve discussed, 9% of working Americans and their families or roughly 14 million people are in Health Reimbursement Arrangements or HRA plans that are similar to, but research shows less effective than HSAs. This was because they aren’t portable, they aren’t investable and they aren’t truly owned by consumers. Millions more, in fact over 70% of those with private coverage are in higher deductible PPO or HMO plans as Steve noted, that don’t today, meet the definition of HSA qualified. Deductibles and other consumer out of pocket costs in these plans have all increased dramatically in recent years. So enabling more consumers to open HSA would both provide immediate relief to higher costs and align incentives among consumers and the broader healthcare system to fight higher costs longer-term. Second, increasing the amount can be – that can be constructed annually to an HSA, as speaker Ryan has proposed, would allow HSAs…

Operator

Operator

Thank you, sir. [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Peter Costa of Wells Fargo Securities. Your line is open.

Peter Costa

Analyst

Thank you, guys and good quarter. And Jon thanks for the rundown of your views on the election and how it impacts you in the future and then realistically in the near term. Can you go through a couple other thoughts for me in terms of the election? What have you seen in terms of changes, in terms of your phone ringing from – has there been more accounts asking you recently about HSAs? Has there been more members calling in to talk about HSAs? What are you seeing in terms of the changes since the election as being the most relevant? And then can you tell me, how many accounts do you have or HSA accounts do you have with exchange plans today? There is some risk there and I am kind of curious if there are any HSA exchange plans that you have and how many they would be?

Jon Kessler

Management

Sure. I will try and answer the first part and then I will give you a general sense of the second and if need be, we can certainly follow-up. On the first point, let me address it at a couple of levels. At the consumer level, it’s absolutely true that in the aftermath of the election, we did see some noticeable call volume. In many cases, from individuals who had HSAs and thought that there had – there would have already been changes in laws that would allow them to either contribute more or other favorable things and so we are kind of asking questions. So, we did see that. It wasn’t extraordinary, but it’s clear that the consumer reaction, among our membership, has been – this is likely to – whatever their broader reaction of the election has been, this is likely to make this account that they have with us more valuable. I think if you kind of go upstream to the employers’ health plans and then I will talk a little bit about the enterprise employers, I think when we say broadly, I think without wanting to speak for the entire health plan community, certainly the discussions that we have had since the election have, in a way, been reminiscent of the conversations that we had in the early years of HSAs, where people were really convinced that at that time that this was going to be a very rapid trend and we try to do what we always do, which is say look these things take time, but I think people are sort of now, as a result of the election, are circling right back to those same thoughts and perhaps, instead of spending all their time on the intricacies of value-based payment or whatever it…

Peter Costa

Analyst

And I just wanted to follow-up, as you pointed out, some of the old climate [ph] around HSA has come back, but then also some of the negative thoughts have come out in terms of HSAs being something for the wealthy people. We have seen some – a few articles like that recently being brought back up again, is there anything you are doing with the industry to try to fight that back or in Washington to make sure people understand how HSAs are truly used today and can be used by everybody today?

Jon Kessler

Management

There are certainly a lot of activities that as an industry, we try to do to put facts forward about how HSAs were used. And I think one of the most astonishing and simple facts is that it turns out and this will surprise no one that health expense is not terribly well correlated with wealth. That is to say that whether you are a family of five, earning $60,000 a year or a family of two earning $300,000 a year, you will tend to have these expenses and they will be of a similar level, all sort of in the grand scheme of things. And what an HSA really does is, it reduces the fixed cost and then on the premium side and then of course gives you a tool to really reduce the marginal costs. And I think in particular, something people don’t realize is that our highest marginal tax rates, if you sort of add everything in are actually on people in the middle income because they pay not only income tax at the federal and state level, but also social security Medicare on the last dollar of their income. So our highest marginal tax rates are on these individuals and therefore, they get a lot of the highest savings from HSA. So we feel like the facts are there and we can’t prevent people from making whatever political points they want to make, positive or negative. But our focus is on the facts. And yes, I mean absolutely we are active as our others in Washington and around the country trying to articulate the benefits that we see with our members everyday.

Peter Costa

Analyst

I will stop there. Thank you very much.

Jon Kessler

Management

Thanks Peter.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Stephanie Davis of JPMorgan. Your line is open.

Stephanie Davis

Analyst

Hey guys. Thanks for taking my question.

Jon Kessler

Management

Thanks Stephanie.

Stephanie Davis

Analyst

I have also got a – I have got one follow-up to your election impact summary, so given you talked about the need for greater consumer awareness at your recent Investor Day, is it possible to identify or kind of quantify any impact you would get from greater consumer awareness with the new administration and talk about HSA so much?

Jon Kessler

Management

Yes. I think we will have a little better sense of that as the time goes on. One of our areas of – and you can probably tell by our remarks here, we are what, 3.5 weeks, 4 weeks out from the election and there are lots of other things people are digesting as you well know. But I think as we get a little farther on, we will see what that impact is beginning with, I think the enrollment data that we are starting to see roll in and that will be reflected in our Q4 results. I think that will be useful and informative as to whether the sort of greater use of the term and greater awareness has led more individuals to sign up. And I don’t really want to comment about that at this point because the sample is relatively small and we will have a lot more data over the next few weeks. But I think that will be a very – that would be the first real relevant indicator from our perspective as to how to quantify this and express it in terms of the actual growth we see versus the expectations that either you had or that we have.

Stephanie Davis

Analyst

Understandable. And one follow-up to that, beyond the greater volume of inbound calls, do you seen any big shifts in the nature of customer questions versus the prior year until recent inbound calls?

Jon Kessler

Management

I think, what is – I will say is that people are at the consumer level are really becoming more focused on the ways that they can use these accounts to financial benefit. And I suspect that’s just a bit of a repetition of the message of the HSAs and taxes and so forth versus my employer gave me some money, let’s spend it. So I do think, like any aspect of ongoing education, there are teachable moments out there. And I suppose the renewed focus on this area, that’s come in the wake of the election, again I would be cautious to say a lot of people, folks and a lot of things and the elections you know, but it is a little bit of a teachable moment and I suspect it has a certainly the evidence from what we see in the field has kind of pushed the dialogue forward a little bit in terms of people’s understanding of how to benefit from these accounts, which in turn, I think not only affects enrollment from our perspective, but also affects our other two revenue streams that now make up majority of our revenue. People who understand how to benefit from these will use the accounts more transactionally and will also in the end, save more in the accounts. So that’s where the real excitement is from my perspective.

Stephanie Davis

Analyst

Thank you for taking my questions.

Jon Kessler

Management

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Greg Peters of Raymond James. Your line is open.

Greg Peters

Analyst

Good afternoon team. Congratulations on the quarter.

Jon Kessler

Management

Thank you, Greg.

Greg Peters

Analyst

Just I have a number of questions I will limit it to just a couple.

Jon Kessler

Management

Are you going to decide halfway in how many or how does that…

Greg Peters

Analyst

Well, it depends I guess it will depend on your answers, right. So it’s sort of a debate type of answer. Let’s – trying to gauge like the performance of your M&A from earlier this year, I think in the second quarter you said M&T and Bancorp added about 195,000 accounts through the second quarter results and should we be asking you if that number has grown from the second quarter or should we be asking you how that number has changed to the third quarter to get a sense of performance or is that to shorter period of time?

Jon Kessler

Management

I am going to say you just did. And rather than giving you yes or no is whether you should ask.

Greg Peters

Analyst

Yes.

Jon Kessler

Management

Here is what we think about it and then Darcy, please feel free to elaborate. We – while we track each of these portfolios at kind of a micro level, as they age, so we can look at the performance of a portfolio we acquired 7 years or 8 years ago. What becomes somewhat challenging very quickly is you sort of start to get in the game of, did a new employer joined because of this acquisition or because of sales. And we don’t, at a sales level, want to draw those distinctions. So what you shouldn’t expect from us is that we are going to on an ongoing basis say, well now M&T is up to this number of accounts or what have you. It just starts to put too much kind of pressure on that piece and I just don’t think it’s that productive for the business. That having been said, I will make the following general comments on performance. And no, I don’t think it’s too early. First of all, in both cases what we have seen is that the presence of the company in some new geographies and with some new partners has had an immediate and I think positive impact in terms of new accounts and so forth. So I think about even something as basic as looking at some territories, I think about the South Central U.S. where we didn’t have a strong footprint and Bancorp did, as an example and where we have a new health plan down there this year that’s going gangbusters, that’s not one we acquired, the relationship in the [indiscernible] acquisition, but kind of – and certainly was related to that, strengthened their confidence in going with us and allowed us to put more feet on the street. And similarly with M&T, we are seeing more activity in the M&T service territory, upstate New York, etcetera, where we already had feet on the street and then so forth. So I think that’s pretty good. And then, secondly obviously, at the level of individual accounts and the individual groups, those have largely been retained as expected. And what we expect is as those individual accounts age, their balances will grow and they already have begun to do that. And as those groups add members, of course, they will add. So, I think generally our view is that, to-date, these things are doing what we expected them to do and certainly contributed to some of the scale improvements we saw in the first few quarters immediately afterwards in terms of service costs. Darcy, if you would like to add to that please feel free?

Darcy Mott

Management

Yes. And as you know, Greg, once the acquisitions are done, we don’t give individual disclosure on particular portfolios. And for the reasons that Jon gave, it also – what happens frequently with these is as an individual HAS moves its sponsorship, they may move from an M&T product or they may move from a Bancorp product into a HealthEquity product as they maybe change employers or whatever. And so then, it becomes kind of difficult to track them and attach them to that prior portfolio. What I would say though, that historically, for the ones that we have had for longer periods of time, the acquisitions that we did earlier is notwithstanding that tracking mechanism, that generally those portfolios, the number of accounts maybe slower than what our traditional HealthEquity growth is, because they don’t have the mechanism for getting further penetration of new employers or health plans. But generally, we see that their AUM dollars will grow over time, because to the extent that they are savers and then those balances will also grow. So, that’s just a general observation of what we expect when we do these portfolio acquisitions.

Greg Peters

Analyst

Excellent color. As a follow-up, I know going before the election and then certainly after the election, there has been some emphasis on HSAs and I am just curious if there has been any tangible change in the competitive posturing of the marketplace from other providers of HSAs? And then I have just one small technical question after this.

Jon Kessler

Management

Steve, you want to hit that one, if you are...

Steve Neeleman

Management

Sure. Yes, hi, Greg. I think it’s honestly too early. As you know, all of our competitors that are doing their job are heads down right now in implementation and fulfillment. And so I don’t think you are going to see that type of competitive behavior really start to exhibit itself until early in the first quarter as we start getting out on the road. There is a little bit of sales activity that happens kind of in this natural gap that happens between open enrollment that’s being completed mid-November through kind of mid-December before people start checking out. But you even got a holiday in the middle of that. So, I think it’s too early. Look, our competitors – we have strong competitors. We have said that all along. And I think our growth, as I mentioned in my remarks, to kind of be growing twice what our competitors are, I mean, speaks a lot to the network partner relationships we have built and our team’s ability to execute, but it keeps us thinking everyday. And so I am sure that there is going to be more competitors that are excited about this market and that’s good. And we hope they continue to elevate their game as we do, because as we have said all along, the one thing that hurts the market is when competitors don’t do their job and people get a bad taste in their mouth about HSAs. We are still in that employer market that Kaiser mentioned. We are showing only 19% penetration and that’s just for people in HSA qualified plans. We think probably around 75% of those folks actually have accounts. And so you are really talking about a minority of folks that are in these yet, and that doesn’t include any Medicare, any Medicaid, even people in TRICARE, for example, or disqualified from having HSAs. And we think there is a great opportunity to start opening it up these other channels with where these are heading. And I think the administration change may help a little bit, but we think a lot of what’s helping is either just working for folks, right. It’s working. We don’t have to artificially prop up HSAs anymore. They are working.

Greg Peters

Analyst

Right, right. And then the small technical question, Darcy and I know you hit this in your prepared remarks about the tax rate. I noticed in the balance sheet, there was some movement among some of the values for the deferred tax asset. Could you talk a little bit about what was going on in there and if there is any implications on future expectations?

Darcy Mott

Management

Yes. Without knowing exactly what you are referring to, I will say that as we proceed through the year, the biggest changes that occur is that in a stock option exercises perspective as we have stock options that are being exercised for which we get some tax benefit and it may, in fact, move us into a loss position at some point in time. And so the way those are accounted for on a deferred tax basis, it maybe reflected in the lines where that deferred tax benefit is recorded. So, that’s what’s been happening throughout this year. When we started out the year, it builds up over time and some of that is related to the stock price increase that we have experienced and then the exercises of some stock options throughout the year.

Greg Peters

Analyst

Right. And the tax rate in the third quarter, just to cover that ground again, was a little bit lower than what you are expecting. And can you just circle back to your comments about that?

Darcy Mott

Management

Yes. That was related to R&D credits. And so the R&D credits were made, I believe, they are made permanent and then we took the – we got some benefit from that in the third quarter.

Greg Peters

Analyst

And so we shouldn’t expect that going forward, those type – that type of downward volatility is that right?

Darcy Mott

Management

Correct.

Greg Peters

Analyst

Perfect. Thank you, everyone for your answers.

Darcy Mott

Management

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Sandy Draper of SunTrust Robinson Humphrey. Your line is open.

Sandy Draper

Analyst

Thanks so much. Just want to maybe little bit of a follow-up in terms of competitive environments probably for Steve and not as much in terms of changes that have happened post with the election or what you expect there, but clearly, you guys continue to gain share a lot faster in the market. On one hand, I feel like a lot of what you guys do really well is the service level for the actual user, but that user is not who is actually making the decision and got HealthEquity. So, just is anything changing or what are the two or three key reasons you think people, big employers or plans are choosing HealthEquity? And has that changed at all over the last 2 or 3 years? Thanks.

Steve Neeleman

Management

Yes. I will offer some couple of thoughts and Jon, I am sure you have got some too. So, it really depends on segment size. I mean, as you get into the smaller employers kind of loosely defined, below 1,000 or a couple of thousand employees. I mean, we have got – we have had some great success because of our health plan partnerships, because that’s where those employers tend to kind of go with the offering that is put in front of them by their health plans. As you go upstream, Sandy and the employers become a little bit more discriminating and we see this in their purchase of other services. They are much more likely employers with thousands of employees are much more likely to say they want to pick their own PBM. They are much more likely to say they want to pick their own disease management company. In that case, they are asking for account services that we provide that and this word comes up a lot in the RFPs that are integrated and this allows – and we talked a lot about our ecosystem, the ability to plug in to the health plan they want to use with enrollment provider they want to use or to even plug into some of these other ancillary benefits like a telemedicine or transparencies wellness providers. And so, I think that has been the thing that’s really evolved over the last 2 or 3 years, where they become more discriminating and asking for this integrated user experience, because they know that they don’t wanted to be clunky and they wanted to work well. And then, I think we spent a lot of time in the last couple of years thinking about how to educate these members at the right time, in the right way with the right information, so you are not burdening them with kind of the typical overload of info. And so they like our approach with that too. Jon, it sounds like you may have some thoughts as well.

Jon Kessler

Management

Yes, it’s interesting, I mean, this is – thanks for the question, Sandy. This is the time of the year where we are looking through our win-loss interviews. And like a lot of firms, we pride ourselves on the amount of win-loss analysis that we do, having third-parties talk to folks who have either chosen us or not chosen us and really to try and get a sense of where we can improve. And it’s interesting that as you pointed out, a huge part of that conversation is about service, but in particular, it is about the fact that our model lends itself to a high level of service delivery and a high quality of service delivery at every level of what for lack of a better term, I would call the partnership or distribution chain. So of course, there is the individual and I think it’s fair to say we have a strong reputation for quality of what we deliver to our members every hour of every day of the year. But that’s really, as you plan kind of that where it ends it just where it begins. There is service to HR professionals in smaller firms and regional HR professionals in larger firms who have day-to-day questions and/or issues that come up as they are just trying to do their job and/or need education themselves. There is service to those at a more strategic level. There is service to the advisors, brokers, consultants, nationally, both national firms, regional firms and local firms. There is service to the – our health plan partners and their sales teams, which as you know, are large and complex and have a lot to do and a lot on their plates. And of course, there is support to the more strategic product type…

Sandy Draper

Analyst

Great, that’s really helpful commentary Steve and Jon. I appreciate it.

Jon Kessler

Management

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Mark Marcon of RW Baird. Your line is open.

Mark Marcon

Analyst

Good afternoon Jon, Steve and Darcy. Congratulations on the terrific quarter and obviously everything going in the right direction in terms of policy changes coming up. I am wondering, with regards to the policy changes, which will eventually materialize, what are you doing with regards to the sales team in advance of that, in order to take advantage of the opportunity, obviously with Matt’s departure, I am not sure if that slows things down or not, but just wondering how you are addressing that and how we should think about sales and marketing expense going forward and how you are going to attack that opportunity?

Jon Kessler

Management

I will kind of address it more generally and then defer to Darcy for any specific comments on sales and marketing expense. And Steve, please feel free to chime in, since of course in the interim, Steve is really leading the sales organization. It’s an opportunity for education. This is what it boils down to education, education, education, education. So the fact that we are now being asked by our partners and prospects and so forth, just like our members, hey, what does this mean, what’s coming down the pipe, what do you think is happening in Washington, I mean we are the first to say that we don’t claim to have some insight as to what might be going on in some back room. In fact, I think the best insight we can offer is there is no back room. What’s going on is exactly what you are reading as far as we can tell. But I think we do have the benefit of experience in this area and it’s yet – as much as it’s about the specifics of any particular policy move or whatnot, it’s also an opportunity to educate. And actually I will give you a real example. So Steve and I happen to be talking with one of our partners about the changes in Washington and an example that we used in the earlier prepared comments, about making it easier to use, I would say dollars, when you are between jobs was raised as something that’s been talked about. And so in the middle of the kind of conversation, Steve sort of poked and said actually, here is some stuff you can already do. And I have to admit, I have only been doing this for what, 11 years, and I didn’t know this. And certainly, the partner didn’t know it. And so therefore I suspected very few of our members who are in the situation knew it that for example, if you are collecting unemployment, you can use an HSA to pay individual premiums. Now, that’s a small example. The point being that talking about this stuff that’s going on in Washington, the way we look at it generally is, it is an opportunity to up our game as far as education, to be an expert and being an expert is what helps us sell and that’s what our people are doing in the field today when they are talking about this. Steve, anything to add there?

Steve Neeleman

Management

No. I think Darcy, you can provide some color perhaps on the spend. We have continued to invest in our sales team and a very important job right now is to replace Matt. And we are doing the actual search and we are thrilled with the list of candidates we are reviewing and so once we get that in place that will help us to continue to accelerate. I will say though that Matt left a great legacy of very strong leaders. As you know, we have a fairly complex sales organization where we have people that are working channels, people that are direct selling to channels and to employers and then our marketing team and their efforts. And so I think right now, our job has been to keep that team engaged with all the resources they need to finish this year strong and then to already get it running started and next year, as we bring on our new sales leader. And we have made very thoughtful expansions of the team where in the model, we have always done, certainly under Jon’s tenure, which is to expand where we have B-check. And so we have continued to do that. And I think that, rest assured, we are not going to be caught sleeping with all of this activity in the market, especially in the opportunities in DC or wherever, because we sell in many respects, we have been helping lead this charge with work we have been doing, both commercially and back with our friends in Washington. But Darcy, do you want to comment a little bit on the spend, I mean I don’t know how, which one to do on that.

Darcy Mott

Management

Well, I think it’s fair to say that if you look at the percentage of revenues that we spend on sales and marketing has been in this 10%, 11% range for a while. And we have often said that we try to spend our sales and marketing dollars wisely where we can actually get results. That being said, if we found an opportunity to go after something because of the wider spread acceptance, we think that we actually have those channels pretty well covered and expansion within our footprint, our health plans and employers, we are ready to take those as they come to us. But – so I don’t think that we have any dramatic changes there. But I will say that, you will recall a year ago, in our third quarter, we expanded our account executive team fairly significantly and have done that as they have continued through this year now. And the objective of that was to have people, as Steve said where we have had people in the streets, particularly with respect to a health plan and to be able to take advantage of those opportunities, the account executives are focused primarily on our existing employers. And what can we do with them. And so we think that as employers become more engaged in this and want to drive increased penetration that we do already have some of those people in place to build upon that. And as the employer channel grows, I think that you will see that we will add some more resources there. But we don’t anticipate any dramatic changes in total, but just deploying those resources as effectively as we possibly can.

Mark Marcon

Analyst

Great. And then I have just had a couple more, with regards to the monthly account fees, Darcy, you have mentioned in your prepared comments that you anticipated basically going back to the historical kind of declines of 5% to 10%. How confident are you in that and what would drive that, particularly in light of an increased effective yield, which make competitive activity a little bit – obviously, as people are looking at the overall economics of having an account, there is trade-offs and you might anticipate some trade-off there, wouldn’t you?

Darcy Mott

Management

Yes, there maybe. We haven’t seen the rate increases. They are speculated to happen. Those rate increases, while they don’t – we will see how they play out. And so you may have competitors or even ourselves as they feel like we are making a little bit more money at the facility or so where it can be more competitive on the account fee. But what we are talking about in the returns is more into the 5% to 10% range is kind of like in the tiered pricing, the removal of the acquisition impact where they had lower account fees and year-over-year comparisons that with the tendency to drive that a little bit lower and then the RA factor that will play itself out as RAs become less of a significant portion of our overall service revenue, because the HSAs are growing so much more rapidly. But you are right, we will see what the competitive marketplace out in that, but as we have always said, we will compete aggressively for HSAs.

Mark Marcon

Analyst

Great. And then can you talk a little bit about the composition of the new partners, the new employer partners? I mean, your carrier partners that you had come in during the selling season so that when we think about the enrollments, like are there any characteristics, were they slightly bigger, slightly larger employers, what did you see out there in terms of the composition?

Jon Kessler

Management

Yes, this is Jon. I am going to say generally consistent with what we have seen in the past in terms of the performance of new partners. And in general, my preference would be to defer commenting too much on that until we actually start talking about the results of the sales cycle.

Mark Marcon

Analyst

Okay. And then with regards to where the rates will go to, can you just talk a little bit, Darcy, how you are thinking about structuring the duration in the near term given that it seems like rates are going up?

Darcy Mott

Management

Yes. So, we are obviously looking at this. We will bring on a lot of AUM in the fourth quarter. We will see what the rates do. I mean, rates have improved from where they have been. And so we have always said that we will get rate increase benefits in the contracts that we entered into for new money that we bring on board in our fourth quarter and into the first quarter as we get rollovers. And so we are prepared with both existing and some new partners to have capacity. We are confident we can place all of the money that we will have be coming in at very competitive rates. When we have talked about our duration before, we have said that we will place money generally in the 3 to 5-year timeframe for duration for our fixed contracts or floating contracts obviously, they just float. And so there is not a duration attached to those. But our duration has been – because we are getting close to the end of the fiscal year, that’s gone from like the 3-year down – 3-year duration down closer to a 2-year duration. So, we will probably take that duration backup to a little bit higher, 3 – in that 3 to 4 range. And so we would expect that over time that we will get some benefit of that as our duration comes up, especially as rates increase.

Jon Kessler

Management

But I will just add to that and say, generally, what we manage is for and I think Mark, you understand this, it’s more of a reminder for others, what we are managing for here is consistency. If the result of that management is that we have deferred some income growth to the future, so be it. But – so, I mean, what Darcy’s point is a good example of that, we have kind of – as there has been – have been some firming of rates prior to the election, so forth, we generally took that opportunity to real it in a little bit and we just think that’s probably appropriate actually getting to a point where we were underneath our sort of averages. So, we will come out, of course, for the reason Darcy discussed and we are going to be deploying cash quite a bit very shortly. But what I don’t think people should expect is that the way we look at this is yes, there is an extra base – set of basis points, so let’s go out farther on the curve. It’s more great. This gives us more flexibility and obviously some of that will drop to the bottom line in the short-term. But a lot of it is, look, this is good flexibility for us to have in the business that, as a general rule, is very profitable and we think that the best thing as a growing business we can do is retain options and flexibility.

Darcy Mott

Management

And so consistent with what we have done, we have no intent of changing our – what we kind of view as a balanced approach and how we layer out our deposits. We don’t want to hold load of them expiring necessarily at the same time. We try to layer them out on a consistent basis that we can manage.

Mark Marcon

Analyst

Great. Just as a follow-up to that, your incremental dollars, what sort of effective yields are you getting on the paper that you are deploying?

Darcy Mott

Management

The only rate that we deploy is what we report in our quarterlies.

Jon Kessler

Management

That means he is not telling you.

Mark Marcon

Analyst

I got it. I got it.

Jon Kessler

Management

Good try.

Mark Marcon

Analyst

Thanks.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Randy Reece of Avondale Partners. Your line is open.

Randy Reece

Analyst

Yes, good evening. I have three questions. Number one, I was wondering what you could tell me about the HSA store, the link that we found onsite that takes us to a place where we can purchase things with our HSA account and I was wondering what kind of incentive you get for having that link and if that is something that is going to be a meaningful piece of the business sometime in the long-term?

Jon Kessler

Management

In short, we do get some benefit from that. It’s modest. It’s something that, I guess our basic view, Randy, is that, like a lot of things we do, we are trying to respond to the needs of our members. And so one of the things that members have said is hey, sometimes, it can be confusing as to what’s eligible and what’s not and it’s not so much they are looking for particular bargain. It’s that the real benefit of that particular service is, it kind of sorts out what is and isn’t eligible. And I think that maybe particularly useful to the extent that we see the inclusion in – the reintroduction in HSA qualified spend of over – various over-the-counter nonprescription items that, for a while, we are in and then they went out with the ACA and now, they will likely come back in I think. So, that’s kind of the way we look at it is, it’s an education device as much as anything else, but it’s one of a number of things that we are experimenting with that, in our cautious way that we do things, to try and really grow the value of the ecosystem. I mean, we are doing some similar things in the telemedicine area that we have talked about and in some other areas where, yes, there is some revenue produced from them and to the extent that they are really effective, that revenue piece can grow and can help us be incredibly competitive, because we think we have some advantages in how we point people to these things, but it’s small at this point.

Randy Reece

Analyst

We have also noticed a significant expansion in the number of investment options that are available to those who invest and is that an important evolution of your strategy there?

Jon Kessler

Management

Well, thank you for asking. You are on it. What’s actually happening is this is something that we began prior to the publication of the fiduciary rule or more properly, the DOL conflict rules as it’s known. But that I think – but certainly that brought focus to the activity. What we are actually doing is we are reducing significantly the cost of investing for our members. And the way we are doing that is – and I know there are probably some who are listening – for whom this may bring a tear or two, but I am sorry, is that we, through our subsidiary, HealthEquity Advisors, that is the regulated investment advisor, we evaluated every fund we offer and identified what we believe is a fantastic lineup of very low cost funds, including where they are available, institutional class shares, the same prices that the truly big boys get, that we are now able to bring to our members. And we kind of previewed this, I believe it was early this year or late last year, with an individual index investor product that we launched and now we are kind of rolling that out. So what’s actually going to happen is that you are seeing an expansion and then you are going to see a contraction because at the same time, we will be eliminating from our fund lineup those funds that are not compliant with our approach to addressing the fiduciary rule and most of those are higher cost funds and in general, higher cost than actively managed. So the result of all this for our members is going to be that kind of, if you look at it in terms of overall expense ratio for funds on average is that the savings to our members is…

Randy Reece

Analyst

Alright. I have one last question, the technology and development expense took a step up this quarter, was that related to any particular event and what kind of trend should we expect beyond here?

Jon Kessler

Management

Darcy, you want to hit that one?

Darcy Mott

Management

Yes. In the technology and development expense line, there is a couple factors that play into that. One is on-boarding of new people. We did onboard a couple of new teams to get a jumpstart a little bit on some initiatives and so there is some element of that. But a big portion of development activity is actually getting capitalized up and then they get spread out over time. So what’s happening is that as capitalized development projects increase, then the amortization will kick in. And so that’s the – what you have probably seen in Q3 particularly. Overall, we don’t – just like in sales and marketing, we don’t expect anything over dramatic changes in percentages or whatever. The impact that we have talked about in the past is, is just this impact of amortization as we go through capitalized software development, which we cap up and then we amortize it over generally a 3-year to 5-year period. So that’s probably what you are seeing in particular, with respect to the third quarter.

Randy Reece

Analyst

Very good. Thank you very much.

Jon Kessler

Management

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, I would like to turn the call back over to management for any closing remarks.

Jon Kessler

Management

Thanks everybody. We appreciate it. Happy holidays. We hope you will, as certainly our team will both in Draper and now in Price, Utah will spend time with families and Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah. We will see it after the first of the year.

Operator

Operator

Thank you, sir. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. That does conclude your program. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Have a wonderful day.