WARREN, Pa., Aug. 27 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Managed Care of America, Inc. ("MCA") of Pittsburgh, PA has entered into a Letter of Intent with Northwest Savings Bank to create a health savings account ("HSA") product according to John G. Beck, Vice-President of Legal Affairs and Product Development for MCA.
The Letter of Intent expressed the intent of Northwest Savings Bank and MCA and its third party administrator subsidiary, MCA Administrators, Inc. to jointly develop, market and administer a Health Savings Account Product to corporate customers. Mr. Beck stated, "We are very excited to partner with a bank the caliber and size of Northwest Savings Bank on this HSA product. We spoke with several banks and we found that Northwest has the expertise, resources and ambition to move into this new era of health administration products with us." In explaining the plan, Mr. Beck went on to state that "the initial level of the product will be what we have defined as a basic HSA product. With that in place, we will develop and offer our employer clients a fully integrated HSA product that will provide more features than the basic HSA plus real-time connectivity between MCA and Northwest Savings Bank, our employer clients and the plan members. We anticipate making the basic HSA product available to our clients this fall, with the fully integrated HSA product being available in early 2005."
"We are more than pleased with this relationship and our plans to develop health savings products," said Gregory C. LaRocca, Executive Vice President, Administration, of Northwest Savings Bank. "We believe that working with MCA will allow us to extend a new and needed product to MCA's clients and our own."
MCA is a holding company of several subsidiaries operating varied lines of business in the managed care administration industry including third party administration, pharmacy benefit management, managing general underwriting for medical stop-loss insurance, consulting and PPO products. MCA is headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with offices in Columbus, Ohio and Birmingham, Alabama. For further information about MCA, visit http://www.mcoa.com/ .
With assets of $6 billion, Northwest Bancorp operates 137 community banking offices in central and western Pennsylvania and in Ohio and has announced pending mergers of banks in Baltimore, Maryland and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The local bank also operates 49 consumer finance offices in Pennsylvania and New York through its subsidiary, Northwest Consumer Discount Company. The stock of its parent company, Northwest Bancorp, Inc., trades on the Nasdaq under the symbol NWSB. For further information about Northwest, visit http://www.northwestsavingsbank.com/ .
Northwest BancorpCONTACT: John G. Beck, +1-412-922-2803, Ext. 653, or Greg LaRocca,+1-814-726-2140, both of Northwest Bancorp
