Reading a welfare plan page

A banner at the top of the page links to the sponsor's welfare portfolio at /welfare/sponsor/[ein] when the EIN sponsors more than one welfare plan, and to the cross-form company view at /companies/[ein] for the full retirement-and-welfare picture.

The unified header carries sponsor name, plan name, EIN, plan number, plan year, address, and a link to the filed 5500 PDF. Eyebrow chips show funding type (fully insured, self-funded, mixed, MEWA, unknown), and attribute chips for MEWA and stop-loss when applicable. Tripped opportunity flags ride alongside as colored pills.

Funding type is derived from the 5500 face indicators (lines 9a/9b plus the Sch A presence rules); MEWA is read directly from the type-of-plan-entity code. A plan tagged self-funded with no Sch A contract and no stop-loss carrier is a known cost-bearer.

Two preview panels matching the retirement-page pattern.

• Filing contacts. Sponsor signer, admin signer, plan administrator, every broker and consultant on Schedule A Part 1, every carrier on Schedule A, every named TPA on Schedule C, plus any retirement-plan contacts under the same EIN. Drawer opens to the full list.
• Documents.Every Form 5500 and schedule the sponsor EIN has filed - retirement and welfare both - plus Top Hat statements when present. Each row deep-links to the DOL's archived PDF.

A row of year chips lists every welfare-plan filing year on file. Click any year to navigate to ?year=YYYY for that filing; the latest year shows by default. Carriers, brokers, TPAs, and opportunity flags reflect the pinned year.

Four tiles, each with a year-over-year delta vs the prior filing.

Up to ten years of multi-chart history, all bar charts on bounded heights and the shadcn chart-1..5 palette.

• Total premiums. Carrier-paid premium year by year.
• Premium per covered life. Normalized cost trajectory.
• Persons covered. Headcount on the plan.
• Contracts on file. Number of distinct Schedule A contracts.
• Premium by benefit type. Stacked medical, dental, vision, life, disability, and the rest.
• Broker comp. A merged $ and percent chart so you can see absolute dollars and percent of premium together.
• Retention rate. Schedule A retention percent year by year.
• Carrier and broker counts. Number of carriers and brokers per filing - turnover at a glance.

Every Schedule A row, ranked by premium. Each row shows the carrier name, the contract number, premium and retention figures, the policy term, and coverage chips for the benefit types the contract covers (medical, dental, vision, life, disability, and the rest).

Click a carrier name to see its full national book of business at /welfare/carrier/[id] - every plan it covers, totals by industry and state, and a renewal calendar.

A renewal calendar at the top of the section highlights contracts renewing in the next 30, 60, or 90 days - the prospecting window for a re-shop.

Every Schedule A Part 1 broker row, with commissions, fees, total comp, and percent of premium. Each row links to the broker's book of business at /welfare/broker/[id].

Watch for the "underbroker" condition (large premium, near-zero broker comp - usually a captive or in-house arrangement), and the "high broker comp" condition (over 5% of premium - worth sanity-checking against the carrier-quoted commission schedule).

Schedule C named providers on the welfare plan - third-party administrators, claims processors, PBMs, actuaries, consultants, legal services. Includes the full mailing address and direct compensation. Most common on self-funded arrangements where Schedule A premium isn't the right cost view.

Two adjacent visuals.

• Coverage donut. Premium share by benefit type (medical, dental, vision, life, disability, and the rest), with a small legend table for absolute dollars.
• Coverage matrix. Which benefit-type codes are declared on the 5500 face (ground truth) and which have a matching Schedule A insurance contract (check). Codes declared on the face but missing a Sch A row are typically self-funded benefits paid through TPAs on Schedule C.

Persons covered at start and end of plan year, with active employees and beneficiaries split out. A plan shrinking on the participant axis but flat on premium is paying more per head; a plan growing on participants but flat on premium is winning a renewal.

Twelve welfare prospect signals, each flag tripped against a single named cutoff or peer-cohort comparison. Cohort selection runs through a four-tier ladder (exact, funding-matched, NAICS-matched, national) and picks the most specific cohort with at least five peers.

• Premium spike. YoY premium percent over 20%.
• Carrier switch. The largest carrier changed since the prior filing.
• Broker switch. The largest broker changed since the prior filing.
• High broker comp. Broker compensation above 5% of premium.
• Underbroker. Premium over $1M with broker comp under 1% of premium.
• Concentration risk. Top carrier holds more than 85% of premium.
• Premium per life outlier. Premium per covered life sits in the top quintile of the peer cohort.
• No broker. Premium reported but no broker on Sch A Part 1.
• Self-funded no stop-loss. Self-funded plan with no stop-loss carrier on file.
• MEWA. Plan filed as a Multiple Employer Welfare Arrangement.
• Recently terminated. Final filing indicator on the most recent year.
• Funding transition. Funding type changed from prior filing (e.g. fully-insured to self-funded).

Each tripped flag opens the underlying figure and the cutoff, sourced to the schedule.

Funding-type classification with the underlying 5500 face indicators (insurance, trust, general assets, unfunded). MEWA, stop-loss, and self-funded markers sit alongside. Useful as the audit trail behind the header funding-type chip.

Schedule A reports three overlapping money fields per contract: premium received (cash basis), premium earned (accrual basis), and total charges paid(the broadest figure - premium plus retention or admin where reported separately). Filers report inconsistently: roughly half leave premium received null and premium earned at zero, with the carrier's actual receipts surfacing only in total_charges_paid.

We surface the highestof the three fields per contract row, so charts and rankings reflect the carrier's actual receipts regardless of which column the filer used. For fully-insured contracts where all three are populated this is typically total_charges_paid, which exceeds the narrow premium figure by the retention component (5-15% admin overhead). Read "total premium" on this page as plan-paid carrier spend rather than narrow underwriting premium.

A small number of filings (under one per year on average) report trillion-dollar values caused by data-entry errors (premium entered in pennies, fat-fingered extra zeros). A $50B per-row clip neutralizes those specific cells without affecting any legitimate plan; the largest plausible single Sch A contract observed across the full year range is around $4.5B.