Optum Bank Data Tool Uses Artificial Intelligence, Advanced Analytics to Help People Increase Health Savings

• Updated Optum Health Finance Journey model gives employers enhanced
  strategies to help increase engagement and health savings of employees
• Using AI and advanced analytics is already resulting in higher
  savings rates, helping people with care affordability

SALT LAKE CITY–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Optum Bank, the nation’s leading provider of heath savings accounts, has
enhanced its data and analytics tool to help increase health savings
account (HSA) savings and provide accountholders with a better
understanding of how to use their HSAs to pay for health care costs.

Optum Bank’s updated Health Finance Journey uses behavioral science and
advanced analytics to determine what motivates consumers to behave in
certain ways. The Optum model then clusters consumers into microsegments
based on common attributes and motivations. This provides employers that
sponsor HSA qualifying insurance plans with unique insights that enable
them to develop better targeted and personally relevant communications
to help employees save more for their health care expenses and make
better health care decisions.

This updated model is providing encouraging results. Overall,
accountholders who were targeted with new messages based on the enhanced
Health Finance Journey increased their balances, became eligible to
invest, and took the next step and chose to open investment accounts.
Specifically, the enhanced tool resulted in:

• A 26 percent increase in one-time contributions.
• An increase of average balances of 12 percent.
• A 23 percent increase in investment account openings. Most health
  savings accountholders are required to have a minimum cash balance
  before they can open an investment account.

“Employers want access to the latest data-driven analytics and tools
that help their employees save for their current and future health care
needs,” said Deb Culhane, president and CEO of Optum Bank. “The Health
Finance Journey’s enhanced capabilities offer employers better
strategies to help them communicate the right messages, to the right
employees, at the right time. We are very encouraged by the initial
results of applying this updated model.”

Optum Bank’s enhanced Health Finance Journey recently used machine
learning to analyze nearly 200,000 de-identified accountholders and
identified natural segments and clusters. As an outcome of the analytics
process, more than 2,000 attributes were synthesized based on inputs
such as HSA contributions and distributions, account tenure and consumer
behaviors, among others. The final result was 20 microsegments, where a
consumer within a specific microsegment can be targeted with specific
communications most relevant to them.

In 2014, Optum created the ‘5 Stages of Health Saving and Spending’ to
map employee health care saving and spending behavior with HSAs. These
are stages that people take in their health savings from deciding to get
an HSA to optimizing their accounts through the investment option. The
Optum Health Finance Journey works in tandem with the ‘5 Stages’ by
providing employers with deeper understanding of where their employees
have progressed in each of the stages, and helps employers with targeted
communications tactics to move employees through all five stages,
thereby increasing engagement and savings rates.

For more information about Health Finance Journey and the ‘5 Stages of
Health Saving and Spending,’ visit the Optum Bank website at: https://www.optumbank.com/resources.html.

Investments are not FDIC insured, are not guaranteed by Optum Bank^®,
and may lose value.

About Optum Bank
Optum Bank, Member FDIC, and OptumHealth
Financial Services (OHFS), is a health and wellness company serving more
than 115 million people. Optum Bank is solely dedicated to health care
banking with more than 10 years of experience managing health savings
accounts (HSAs). With more than 5 million health savings and notional
accounts, and more than $9.5 billion in assets, Optum Bank is uniquely
positioned to guide consumers along the journey from opening to
optimizing an HSA. Health care and finance is in our DNA.

About Optum
Optum is a leading information and
technology-enabled health services business dedicated to helping make
the health system work better for everyone. With more than 135,000
people worldwide, Optum delivers intelligent, integrated solutions that
help to modernize the health system and improve overall population
health. Optum is part of UnitedHealth Group (NYSE:UNH). For more
information, visit www.optum.com.

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Contacts

Aaron Albright
Optum
202-383-6403, aaron.albright@optum.com