PlanOptica
Guide

Searching plans

Two surfaces share one piece of search chrome. The retirement rail lives at /retirement; the welfare rail at /welfare. Same search bar, same filter rail layout, same sort, same URL grammar. The facets differ - retirement filters on size, fees, and prospect flags; welfare filters on funding type, carriers, brokers, and renewal premium.

Sponsor or EIN

The search bar accepts a sponsor name, a plan name, or an EIN. Suggestions surface as you type.

  • Nine digits or more matches as an EIN. Hyphens are stripped, so 910425694 and 91-0425694 both work.
  • Shorter strings run a case-insensitive prefix match across sponsor and plan names. boei surfaces Boeing, Boeing Employee Association, and anything else beginning with those characters.
  • Multiple words AND together. acme 401 only matches names containing both tokens.

Empty search bar plus rail filters returns the full result set narrowed by the rail. If a known sponsor isn't showing, check the rail - state or plan-size filters narrow the underlying typeahead too.

Nine retirement panels

Filter rail

The left rail groups every retirement filter into nine panels. Within a panel, multi-value selections OR together; across panels, filters AND together. Empty equals no filter. Counts next to each row reflect how many active plans match if you toggled it on.

PanelWhat it narrows
SizeTotal assets and total participants. Bucketed to advisor segmentation; a histogram slider opens for finer cuts.
LocationState multi-select, city substring match, ZIP code. All match the sponsor's mailing address.
Plan typeSubtype (401(k), 403(b), DB, ESOP, ...), lifecycle (active, frozen, terminating, wind-down), sponsor structure (single-employer, MEP, PEP, ...), and tax class.
Plan featuresForm 5500 plan-feature codes: auto-enrollment, QDIA, 404(c), participant-directed, controlled group, employer securities, PBGC.
Plan policySafe harbor, SECURE 2.0 mandated, in an Auto-IRA state, holds employer securities, has a top hat statement, plus auditor-opinion type.
Industry20 NAICS sectors at two-digit precision, search above the list. Sponsor industry is enriched from PDL where available.
Prospect flags17 flags total, plus 'any flag tripped'. Six DOL-deterministic, six absolute-cutoff, four peer-cohort percentile, one derived wind-down.
PerformanceAdmin fees as percent of assets, year-over-year asset growth, participation rate. Each is a bucketed range with a custom slider.
ProvidersType-ahead any recordkeeper, advisor, TPA, auditor, or legal-services provider. Filters to plans where the named provider appears on Schedule C.
Eight welfare panels

Welfare search

The welfare rail mirrors the retirement chrome - same search bar, same drag-to-bucket sliders, same chip bar below - with welfare-shaped facets in place of retirement ones. Counts and bucket cutoffs are calibrated to the welfare distribution.

PanelWhat it narrows
SizeTotal premiums, persons covered, total broker compensation. Each bucketed; sliders for finer cuts.
LocationState, city, ZIP. Same controls as the retirement rail.
FundingFunding type (fully insured, self-funded, mixed, MEWA), sponsor structure, and the 'has stop-loss carrier' attribute.
CoverageBenefit lines declared on the 5500 face: medical, dental, vision, life, disability, and the rest.
Industry20 NAICS sectors, same enrichment as the retirement rail.
PerformanceYear-over-year premium percent change, retention rate, broker comp as percent of premium.
Prospect flags12 welfare prospect signals: premium spike, carrier or broker switch, high or under broker comp, concentration risk, premium-per-life outlier, no-broker, self-funded no-stop-loss, MEWA, recently terminated, funding transition.
Carriers and brokersType-ahead the primary (largest-premium) carrier or broker on the filing. Filters by carrier_key or broker_key.
Ranking

Sorting and pagination

The retirement results table sorts by total assets (largest first) by default. Click a column header to resort. Available sorts:

  • Total assets (descending, default)
  • Total participants
  • Active employees
  • Sponsor name (A-Z)
  • Asset growth percent (year over year)
  • Admin expense percent of assets
  • Plan-rank percentile

Welfare sorts default to total premiums and offer persons-covered, premium-per-life, broker comp, and sponsor-name alternates.

Pagination is offset-based: 25 rows per page on both surfaces. The pager sits below the table. The limit and offset URL params accept overrides for larger one-shot pulls.

Shareable

Saved searches and URL sharing

Every control writes its state back into the URL, so the address bar is the saved search. Copy the link, paste it in an email, bookmark it - the recipient lands on the same rows.

Example:

/retirement?state=NH,VT,ME
  &assets_min=10000000&assets_max=50000000
  &naics2=52&features=2F,2H
  &flags=flag_fidelity_bond

That URL reads: small-to-mid-market plans in northern New England finance and insurance, with ERISA 404(c) and participant-directed investments, where the fidelity bond flag tripped. The default sort (assets descending) is dropped from the URL.

Signed-in users can save the current URL as a named view from the rail header. Saved views appear under Your saved views on the rail and on the account area.

Worked examples

Five recipes worth keeping