BenefitsLedger
About BenefitsLedger

How the audit works.

BenefitsLedger is an independent research project that analyzes the public U.S. Department of Labor Form 5500 dataset. Form 5500 is the annual filing every employer-sponsored health and welfare plan above 100 participants is required to submit to the DOL's Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA). The filings are public, free, and released through the EFAST2 system.

The same data has long been used by broker-sales-intelligence tools like Judy Diamond's Retirement Plan Prospector, FreeERISA, and BrightScope — all of which sell prospecting lists to brokers about employers. BenefitsLedger is the inverse: it's the first product that lets the employer audit their own plan, with the same depth of analysis.

Methodology

The Fiduciary Fitness Score is a 0–100 composite of seven factors. The seven components are shown directly on every audit page with the per-factor reasoning, so any reader can trace exactly how the score was built.

  1. 1
    Schedule A disclosure clarity
    14 points if both broker compensation and annual premium are disclosed. 8 if only commission. 6 if only premium. 0 if neither. The Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021 expanded fee-disclosure obligations on group health plans; non-disclosure on Schedule A line 5 is itself a fiduciary signal.
  2. 2
    Broker compensation level
    Benchmarked against two peer cohorts: same headcount band and same-industry NAICS-2 group. Score uses the average of the two percentile views when both cohorts are stable (≥20 disclosed peers), or whichever cohort is large enough on its own. 14 pts below P40, 8 between P40–P70, 3 above P70. When commission isn't disclosed, we award 4 partial points and surface the disclosure question explicitly.
  3. 3
    Stop-loss adequacy
    Self-funded plans: 14 pts if a stop-loss carrier is filed, 8 if stop-loss is indicated but carrier name isn't surfaced, 0 if missing. Fully insured plans get a default 11. Future releases will add attachment-point adequacy against workforce profile.
  4. 4
    Filing currency
    14 pts if EBSA's most recent receipt for the plan is within 18 months, 5 otherwise. A stale filing means we can't speak to your current plan with confidence.
  5. 5
    Funding type confidence
    Schedule H, Schedule A, and the welfare-benefit codes don't always agree about funding type. 14 pts for high confidence, 8 for medium, 4 for low.
  6. 6
    Schedule C provider disclosure
    Schedule C is required when any service provider receives $5,000+ in direct or indirect compensation. The provider non-disclosure indicator is one of the most cited filters in ERISA fee-litigation discovery. 15 pts filed clean, 0 pts at least one refused, 8 pts not-filed above threshold, 12 pts below the 100-participant threshold.
  7. 7
    Plan-disclosure breadth
    A complete fiduciary trail names a primary carrier, identifies a signer, and shows breadth of welfare benefit codes. A single-code filing often signals a missing wrap document. Up to 15 points based on welfare-code breadth, carrier presence, and signer presence.

Public-data sources

Independent research disclosure

BenefitsLedger is independent. We are not the U.S. DOL, EBSA, an insurance broker, an insurance carrier, ERISA counsel, or a financial advisor. We don't sell the audits we publish.

We do partner with companies in the employer-benefits space. When a reader chooses to engage with one of our partners after running an audit, we may receive compensation. That compensation does not influence the analysis, the scoring, or the order of the findings shown on this site.

Form 5500 filings are public and can run 12–18 months behind the most recent plan year. Always confirm the audit's findings against your current plan documents and counsel before relying on them for any plan-design or compensation decision. Nothing on BenefitsLedger is legal, tax, fiduciary, or insurance advice.

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