Most finance leaders can tell you what their benefits program costs in premiums and contributions. Far fewer can tell you what it gives back — to employers and employers alike. That matters, because benefits are now one of the biggest lines in what it costs to employ someone, so it’s critical to ensure these programs are working for both sides of the equation.
The question of whether HSA, FSA, LSA, or wellness benefits are performing is determined less on the size of the budget and more on the payment infrastructure undergirding the program. When that infrastructure checks eligibility at the point of purchase, shows participants their balances in real time and handles administration automatically, programs win back value in four key ways: compliance, utilization, staff capacity and the speed of launching the next program.
Key takeaways
Infrastructure decides performance. Compliance, employee use, staff capacity and new-program launches all improve when the payment system underneath does more of the work, not when participants get more training.
Real-time controls change the math. Modern benefit cards check eligibility, update balances and handle administration as each transaction happens. The right purchase clears instantly, and the wrong one doesn't clear at all.
The strongest business case uses your own numbers. Put a dollar figure on compliance, utilization, admin hours and program agility before the technology decision, using your organization's own data instead of an industry average.
Why do benefits deserve more attention from Finance leaders?
Because nearly a third of workforce spending runs through them. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, total employer compensation costs for private industry workers averaged $46.60 per hour worked in March 2026. Benefits accounted for 30.1% of that, or $14.01 per hour.
Wallet Benefits: How to Design Next-Gen HSA and FSA Card Programs That Drive ROI
That's a lot of money moving through programs that most organizations only think hard about once a year, at open enrollment. And there's good evidence much of it isn't landing. NFP's 2025 U.S. Benefits Trend Report found that less than one-third of employees fully use their supplemental benefits, and 13% forget they have them at all.
Benefits are also a daily point of contact between a company and its employees. Every swipe at a pharmacy counter or wellness studio is a moment where the program either works or it doesn't. That makes benefits worth managing all year, with the same rigor a finance leader would give any other major revenue or cost driver.
Where do benefits programs win value back?
Every benefit dollar moves through several steps: enrollment, allocation, spend, an eligibility check and reconciliation. At each one, a program either holds on to value or gives it away. Most of that never shows up on the premium line. Below are four key value-drivers:
Compliance certainty
HSAs, FSAs, wellness stipends all come with eligibility rules. What matters is when the rule gets applied. Applied at the point of purchase, it's invisible and costs nothing to enforce. Applied later in an audit, and it arrives after the money's gone.
Spend controls tied to merchant category codes close that gap. Consider an illustrative organization with $5 million in annual HSA and FSA spend and 2% flagged in post-transaction review. That's roughly $100,000 a year at risk, plus the staff time spent investigating, clawing back or writing off each flagged purchase. Real-time controls take that problem off the table.
Participant utilization
A benefit only pays off if people use it. Castlight Health's 2026 Employee Benefits Report found that 36% of employees go straight to their own solution when a new need comes up, often paying out of pocket instead of checking what their employer already offers. The same report found that more than 80% of employees would be more likely to stay with an employer offering a flexible wellness allowance.
Real-time balance visibility is the most direct fix. A participant who can see the money is far more likely to spend it. In an illustrative program with $12 million to $15 million set aside each year, a 15% to 25% unused rate means $1.8 million to $3.75 million already paid for and sitting idle.
Operational capacity
On most benefits teams, time is scarcer than budget. Take an illustrative team managing 5,000 active accounts. If 5% need manual attention each month (an eligibility dispute, a reimbursement request or a reconciliation exception) at 15 minutes each, that's about 62.5 hours a month. On a real-time, automated platform, most of those cases never happen, and those hours go back to work only your benefits team can do.
Program agility
Running HSAs, FSAs and LSAs on one platform turns each new benefit type into a configuration change rather than a new system to build. That advantage compounds. Every program you add to shared infrastructure launches faster than the one before it.
What capabilities make a benefits program high-performing?
A high-performance benefits program features six key capabilities working together:
Category-level spend controls. Merchant category code and merchant-specific rules limit funds to eligible purchases automatically.
Multiple benefit types on one platform. HSA, FSA, LSA and wellness benefits run on a single system, so new programs don't start from scratch.
Real-time authorization and balance management. Transactions are approved or declined instantly against eligibility rules and available balances, which means fewer errors, disputes and support calls.
Centralized administration and oversight. Central reporting replaces spreadsheets, so you can actually measure flag rates, usage rates and exception volume instead of guessing.
API-first ecosystem integration. Direct connections to eligibility, enrollment and claims systems keep data moving without manual handoffs.
A secure, enterprise-ready platform. Network-level security and regulatory compliance built for benefits programs, so you don't have to build compliance infrastructure yourself.
Together, they deliver compliance that never gets in the way. Companies including evermore and SMI already use SoFi Tech Solutions to modernize benefits distribution this way.
What separates benefits modernizations that work from ones that stall?
Technology rarely decides whether an upgrade pays off. Execution does. Five practices stand out:
Build the business case in CFO terms. Feature lists don't survive budget reviews. Dollar figures built on your own flag rate, usage rate and exception volume do.
Map compliance up front. Document which benefit categories are regulated, which rules apply and how the new platform's controls meet them, before the first dollar moves.
Pair the switch with clear communication. Usage moves when participants understand what changed and can see their balances from day one.
Turn on point-of-sale controls at launch. Category-level eligibility checks are far cheaper to configure at the start than to retrofit later.
Choose platforms by integration, not feature count. The real test is how directly a platform connects by API to the systems that already decide who's eligible for what. Platforms that depend on file uploads or batch reconciliation give back most of the speed and savings you were paying for.
Ready to measure what your benefits program gives back?
Download the Embedded Finance Tracker for the full value-recovery framework and the Benefits Value-Recovery Scorecard.
Frequently Asked Questions
It's a card-based payment platform that checks eligibility, enforces spend rules and updates balances in real time for programs like HSAs, FSAs, LSAs and wellness stipends. It replaces after-the-fact audits and manual reconciliation with automated controls at the point of purchase.
They tie each benefit to the merchant categories, and where needed specific merchants, where it can be spent. Eligible purchases clear instantly, and ineligible ones are declined before any money moves. That removes most of the cost of post-transaction reviews, clawbacks and write-offs.
Often because they can't easily see what they have. NFP's 2025 U.S. Benefits Trend Report found that 13% of employees forget they have supplemental benefits at all. Real-time balance visibility and clear communication are the most direct ways to raise utilization.
Yes. A platform built for multiple benefit types lets you manage several programs on shared infrastructure, with a configurable set of rules for each. That makes each new program faster to launch than the one before it.
Start with a scorecard, not a vendor demo. Measure what your current program gives back in compliance, utilization, admin hours and launch speed, using your own data.
Recent posts
Keep up with SoFi Tech Solutions.
Sign up for news and updates.
* Email Address