What Form 5500 shows and does not
Form 5500 is the annual report that an employee benefit plan files with the Department of Labor, the Internal Revenue Service and the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. One filing covers one plan for one plan year. It is a public record by law, and the Department of Labor releases the contents in bulk. This site covers the 72,371 retirement plans with 100 or more participants that filed for the two most recent form years.
What is in a filing
| Part | Contents | Where it appears here |
|---|---|---|
| Main form | Plan and sponsor, EIN and plan number, business code, plan characteristics codes, participant counts at the start and end of the year | Statement header, participants, plan characteristics |
| Schedule H | The plan's balance sheet and income statement, the accountant's opinion, and yes/no compliance questions | Statement for the year, investment structure, audit and compliance answers |
| Schedule C | Service providers paid $5,000 or more and what they received | Fees and service providers |
| Schedule A, D, R, SB/MB | Insurance contracts, pooled investment vehicles, distributions and funding details for pensions | Not shown |
What the form never contains
- Individual accounts. There is no balance, contribution, salary or name for any participant anywhere in Form 5500. "Assets per participant" on this site is total net assets divided by the number of participants, nothing more.
- The match formula. The form reports the dollar total the employer contributed. Whether that was a 50% match on 6% of pay, a fixed profit-sharing amount, or a correction from an earlier year cannot be seen.
- The investment menu. Schedule H groups assets by legal vehicle (mutual funds, collective trusts, insurance accounts). The list of funds sits in an attachment that is not part of the bulk data.
- Total cost. Expense ratios are taken inside funds before returns are reported, and appear nowhere on the form.
- Current figures. A filing describes a plan year that ended seven to twenty months before it became public. See why filings lag.
Why an average per participant can look low
Total participants include everyone with a balance: long-tenured employees, people hired last month, and former employees who left small accounts behind. A plan with high turnover can show a low average while its long-serving employees hold substantial balances. Comparing a plan with others of the same size and industry removes some of this effect, not all of it.
Defined contribution and defined benefit
In a defined contribution plan (401(k), 403(b), profit-sharing, ESOP) each participant has an account and the plan's assets are the sum of the accounts. In a defined benefit pension the assets back promised monthly benefits, and the employer's contribution is set by funding rules. The two are never compared with each other on this site.
People named on the form
Form 5500 carries the names of the plan administrator's signer, the preparer and sometimes individual trustees or employees paid by the plan. This site does not read those fields and publishes organisations only.
Seeing the original
The complete filing, including attachments and the audited financial statements, is available from the Department of Labor's EFAST2 filing search by plan name or EIN.