Form 5500 Retirement-Plan Prospecting & Fee Intelligence
Every U.S. employer retirement plan files a Form 5500 with the Department of Labor — but the data ships as raw, multi-table EFAST2 bulk files that no recordkeeper, TPA, advisor, or DCIO sales team can prospect against directly. PlanScout turns those filings into a clean, sponsor-resolved dataset that answers the three questions a retirement-plan sales desk actually pays for: who runs a plan in my target segment, are they overpaying on fees versus same-size peers, and which plans just switched recordkeeper / TPA / advisor year-over-year — i.e. exactly who to call this quarter, and why. Deterministic and rule-based — no LLM in the pipeline.
Coverage & headline figures
Built from the free, keyless DOL/EBSA Form 5500 EFAST2 bulk files, scoped to the sellable mid-market: defined-contribution plans in the $1M–$50M asset band, latest two complete plan years (2023 current, 2022 prior for change detection). Raw ZIPs cached for reproducible, offline reruns.
Depth: 109,477 plan-years (2023 + 2022) and 46,719 plans matched year-over-year on (EIN + plan number) so switches and fee swings can be detected. Median fee load falls with plan size exactly as the market behaves — an external sanity check on the benchmark: $1M–$5M 0.550% · $5M–$10M 0.411% · $10M–$25M 0.291% · $25M–$50M 0.199% (median fee % of assets). Top recordkeepers by plans served: Empower (6,717), Fidelity (6,536), ADP (3,465), John Hancock (2,509), Vanguard (1,665).
Sources (free, keyless, public-domain)
-
Form 5500 main filing
(
f_5500_latest.csv) → sponsor identity, geo, business code, plan name, participants, pension-type codes. -
Schedule H
(
F_SCH_H_latest.csv) → total plan assets and administrative-expense detail (the fee numerator). -
Schedule C Part 1 Item 2
(
F_SCH_C_PART1_ITEM2_latest.csv) → per-provider direct & indirect compensation paid by the plan. -
Schedule C Part 1 Item 1
(
F_SCH_C_PART1_ITEM1_latest.csv) → provider identity rows used to classify and name each incumbent.
Host: askebsa.dol.gov EFAST2 datasets. Cross-link
bridge is two-sided: ACK_ID joins each schedule to its
main 5500 filing within a year; (EIN + plan number)
joins a plan across years — the layer no public file ships.
What’s in it — schema
Five cross-linked tables in a hub → records →
derived-cross-link design. sponsors is the prospecting
account; provider_changes is the unique IP — the
year-over-year switch and lead score buyers pay 4–5 figures
for.
| Table | Grain (one row =) | Notable columns | Rows |
|---|---|---|---|
| sponsors | one employer (EIN) | plan_count, total_assets, total_participants, avg_fee_pct | 48,428 |
| plans | one filing (EIN + plan # + year) | plan_type, total_assets, recordkeeper, tpa, advisor, fee_pct_assets | 109,477 |
| service_providers | one Schedule C provider row | provider_name, role, direct_comp, indirect_comp | 232,682 |
| fee_benchmarks | one plan (current year) | band_median_pct, band_p75_pct, fee_percentile, above_market | 50,088 |
| provider_changes | one plan, year-over-year | recordkeeper_changed, fee_pct_change, lead_score, lead_reason | 46,719 |
Columns in plans (the filing record)
Columns in provider_changes (the unique IP)
Sample preview gated
A representative slice of in-scope plan sponsors — the kind of mid-market accounts the dataset surfaces. Sponsor, state, plan assets, and the plan’s fee % of assets are shown; the peer fee percentile, the year-over-year provider switch, and the 0–1 lead score — the proprietary, sellable columns — are redacted. Seven of 48,428 sponsors; ordering does not reflect the lead score.
| Sponsor | State | Plan assets | Fee % assets | Band fee percentile | YoY provider switch | Lead score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sportsman’s Warehouse Holdings, Inc | UT | $32.4M | 0.833% | ••th | •••• | 0.•• |
| The Institute For Family Health | NY | $30.4M | 0.615% | ••th | •••• | 0.•• |
| Greenway Ford, Inc. | FL | $37.7M | 0.716% | ••th | •••• | 0.•• |
| Merit Brass Co. | OH | $19.3M | 0.821% | ••th | •••• | 0.•• |
| Case Paper Co., Inc. | NY | $16.6M | 1.332% | ••th | •••• | 0.•• |
| BrandMuscle Holdings, Inc. | OH | $27.9M | 0.777% | ••th | •••• | 0.•• |
| Navistar Defense, LLC | MI | $11.3M | 1.050% | ••th | •••• | 0.•• |
Request the full live sample
Get a live, end-to-end sample of PlanScout — the
sponsor-resolved plans and sponsors
tables, the per-plan peer fee_benchmarks with
above-market percentiles, and the provider_changes
cross-link with year-over-year recordkeeper / TPA / advisor
switches, fee swings, and the 0–1 prospecting lead score and
reason — plus methodology.
No full dataset is downloadable from this page. Public-domain U.S. Government data (DOL/EBSA Form 5500 EFAST2); not affiliated with or endorsed by the U.S. Department of Labor.