Reference

Glossary and flags

Definitions for every field the app surfaces, the ERISA vocabulary you need to read them, and the full catalog of prospect flags with the conditions that trip them.

ERISA primer

Core concepts

ERISA	Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974. The federal law that defines fiduciary duties, reporting, and disclosure obligations for most private-sector retirement plans.
Form 5500	The annual report every ERISA plan files with the Department of Labor. Includes financial statements, participant counts, service-provider compensation, and plan-feature codes. Public record once EFAST2 processes it.
Schedule H	Financial information schedule filed by large plans (100+ participants). Source of admin expense, investment return, and asset-allocation breakouts.
Schedule I	Short-form financial schedule filed by small plans. Does not include asset-allocation slices or admin-expense percent, so those fields show a dash for Schedule-I-only filers.
Schedule A	Insurance-contract information. Plans with an insurance carrier arrangement (group annuity, pooled separate account) file this.
Schedule C	Service-provider compensation. Source of the Service providers table on the plan detail page.
EIN	Employer Identification Number. Nine digits, assigned by the IRS, unique per legal entity. Plans are keyed by EIN + plan number.
Plan number	Three-digit number the sponsor assigns per plan. Stored as text with leading zeros. A 401(k) is commonly 002 or 003 at many sponsors; 001 is often a DB plan.
Filing ACK ID	The EFAST2 acknowledgement ID for a specific filing submission. Each filed year has its own ACK ID. Old URLs using /plan/<ack-id> redirect 301 to the canonical /plan/<ein>-<plannum> slug.
NAICS code	North American Industry Classification System. The two-digit sector code used as a peer-grouping dimension and as a filter on /plans.
DC vs DB	Defined-contribution plans (401(k), 403(b), profit-sharing) put the investment risk on the participant. Defined-benefit plans promise a specified retirement benefit and keep the risk on the employer. Both are in scope.

Money fields

Financial fields

Total assets (EOY)	Plan net assets at the end of the plan year. Drives the most visible numbers on the page (summary tile, sparklines, asset-growth percent).
Total assets (BOY)	Plan net assets at the start of the plan year. Equals prior-year EOY if filings are continuous.
Asset growth	Signed percent change from BOY to EOY. Combines contributions, investment return, and distributions - a single headline number for how the plan moved this year.
Annual return	Plan-level return on assets. Computed from the filed investment income divided by average assets. Scale is 0-100; negative means the plan lost money on investments.
Employer contributions	Dollars the sponsor contributed this plan year. Includes match, non-elective, profit-sharing, and safe-harbor dollars.
Participant contributions	Dollars participants deferred into the plan this year. 401(k) salary deferrals, 403(b) elective deferrals, after-tax/Roth deferrals.
Admin expense	Plan-administrative expenses paid from plan assets. Shown as a percent of assets on the summary tile and as a dollar figure on the features breakdown.
Admin fee per account holder	Admin expense divided by participants with an account balance (Form 5500 line 6g). Admin fees are paid out of plan assets and allocated pro-rata across account balances, so per-account-holder is the meaningful 'what does a participant actually pay' number. Active-only would understate it since retirees and separated-vested still pay fees on their balances.
Fidelity bond	ERISA Section 412 requires most plans to carry a bond against loss from fraud or dishonesty by anyone handling plan funds. Minimum coverage is 10% of funds handled, capped at $500,000 (or $1,000,000 for plans with employer securities).
Average account balance	Total assets divided by participants with an account balance (Form 5500 line 6g). The true average balance for participants who actually hold money in the plan; active-only would dilute the average with non-participants.

Headcount fields

Participant fields

Form 5500 distinguishes between several participant populations. The distinction matters: participation rate uses one denominator, total participants uses another.

Eligible employees	Workers the sponsor reports as eligible to participate in the plan. Used as the denominator for participation rate. Form 5500 line 6a.
Active participants	Workers currently covered by the plan and eligible to defer (whether or not they actually are).
Total participants	Active participants plus retired-with-balance plus separated-with-balance. The top-line count. Form 5500 line 6f.
Retired-with-balance	Former workers who retired but still have a vested balance in the plan. Rising counts can signal rollover opportunity.
Participation rate	Active participants divided by eligible employees. On a 0-100 scale. Below 60% is a low-participation cohort.
Vested participant	Participant with a non-forfeitable right to their employer contributions. Schedule varies by plan; most plans are fully vested within six years.

Benchmark math

Peer and percentile math

Peer groups are cohorts of plans that share structural attributes: same NAICS industry, same asset band, same plan-type bucket. The count of peers in the cohort is visible on the benchmarks section.

For each metric, every plan in the cohort is sorted and mapped to a 0-100 percentile. Higher always means better. For fees and cash drag, the raw metric is inverted before ranking so that a 90th-percentile admin-expense rank means the plan pays less than 90% of its peers.

The six percentiles combined - participation, return, fees, match generosity, asset growth, cash drag - produce the single plan-rank percentile surfaced on the summary band.

All 16

Prospect flags

Every plan-year is scored against 16 deterministic flags. Six are hard compliance or loss flags, which turn a pill red on the plan detail header. Ten are soft prospecting flags, which turn a pill amber. A plan with no tripped flags shows a single green pill.

Flags are computed from the filing - they do not reflect subsequent corrective action. A flag stays tripped for that plan year even if the sponsor cured the issue the next year.

Compliance and loss (red)

Insufficient fidelity bondFLAG_FIDELITY_BOND: The reported bond coverage is less than 10% of the funds handled by the plan - the ERISA Section 412 minimum.
Failed to transmit contributionsFLAG_FAIL_TRANSMIT_CONTRIBUTIONS: Sponsor reported that employee contributions were not transmitted to the trust within the DOL-required window. A prohibited transaction.
Failed to provide a benefitFLAG_FAILED_PROVIDE_BENEFIT: Plan failed to provide a benefit that was due during the year. Rare but unambiguous ERISA breach.
Corrective distributionsFLAG_CORRECTIVE_DISTRIBUTIONS: Plan refunded excess contributions that failed ADP/ACP nondiscrimination testing. Indicates a top-heavy or skew-to-HCEs problem.
Loss from fraud or dishonestyFLAG_LOSS_DISCOVERED: Plan reported a loss from fraud or dishonesty during the year. Filed on Schedule H, Part III.
Recently terminatedFLAG_RECENTLY_TERMINATED: Plan filed a final return (termination amendment). Rollover and merger opportunity.

Prospecting signals (amber)

High retiree concentrationFLAG_RETIREE_PERCENTAGE: Retirees and beneficiaries make up 25% or more of total participants. Often precedes rollover waves.
Low annual returnFLAG_RETURN_PERCENTAGE: Plan return sits in the bottom quintile of its peer cohort (NAICS x size x plan type) for the year.
High admin expense per participantFLAG_ADMIN_PER_P: Administrative expenses exceed $300 per participant per year. Recordkeeping / audit / legal only; excludes investment management.
High cash allocationFLAG_CASH_PERCENTAGE: More than 10% of EOY assets are held in cash. Possible menu-design or default-fund problem.
Low participation rateFLAG_PARTICIPATION_RATE: Participation rate (account-balance holders / active employees) is below 70%. Below the auto-enroll industry norm.
Low average balanceFLAG_ASSETS_PER_PARTICIPANT: Average balance per participant sits in the bottom quintile of the peer cohort - savings-rate or match opportunity.
High average balanceFLAG_HIGH_ASSETS: Average balance per participant exceeds $250,000. Top-decile high-value plan.
Low employer contributionsFLAG_LOW_EMPLOYER_CONTRIB: Employer contributions per participant are in the bottom quintile of the peer cohort - match generosity gap.
Low participant contributionsFLAG_LOW_PARTICIPANT_CONTRIB: Participant contributions per participant are in the bottom quintile of the peer cohort.
Crossed 100 participantsFLAG_REACHED_100: Account-balance holders crossed the 100-participant threshold this year. Triggers the SECURE 2.0 large-plan audit requirement and Schedule H filing.

Status signals (grey)

Wind-down / frozen planFLAG_WIND_DOWN: Plan appears closed to new enrollment: account-balance holders far exceed active employees, or the plan reports active distributions with no inflows, or the plan filed a final return. Participation rates on these plans are misleading. Most searches default to excluding them.