What is Form 5500?
Form 5500 is the annual report that employee benefit plans covered by ERISA file with the U.S. Department of Labor. It's the single richest public record of how American employers structure and fund their benefits — which is exactly why it's the backbone of benefits go-to-market data.
The essentials
Form 5500 in four facts.
Filed once a year by plan sponsors, Form 5500 documents a benefit plan's finances, funding, and the carriers, brokers, and service providers attached to it.
Who files it
Employers and plan sponsors with employee benefit plans covered by ERISA — both retirement plans (401(k), pension) and welfare plans (health, dental, vision, life, disability).
Where it's filed
Electronically through EFAST2, the joint filing system run by the Department of Labor (EBSA), IRS, and PBGC. Most filings become public records.
When it's due
The last day of the 7th month after the plan year ends — July 31 for a calendar-year plan — with a 2½-month extension available via Form 5558 (to October 15).
What it reports
Plan financials, participant counts, funding arrangement, insurance contracts, service providers, and the carriers and brokers attached to the plan.
What's inside a filing
The schedules that carry the real detail.
The base Form 5500 is a cover sheet. The attached schedules hold the information benefits teams actually care about — insurers, brokers, service providers, and financials.
Schedule A — Insurance
Filed for each insurance contract. Names the carrier, premiums paid, persons covered, and commissions and fees paid to brokers and agents.
Schedule C — Service providers
Large plans report service providers (TPAs, recordkeepers, consultants, brokers) paid $5,000+ in direct or indirect compensation.
Schedule H — Large plan financials
The detailed financial statement for plans with 100+ participants, including assets, liabilities, and benefit-type codes.
Schedule I — Small plan financials
The condensed financial statement for plans with fewer than 100 participants.
Schedules SB / MB — Actuarial
Actuarial information for defined-benefit pension plans, single-employer (SB) and multiemployer (MB).
Schedule R — Retirement
Retirement-plan details such as distributions and funding, filed with pension plan 5500s.
Why it matters for GTM
A filing is a starting point, not an answer.
Read directly, a 5500 tells you a plan's funding type, incumbent carriers, broker of record, premium volume, and how it's changed year over year. But raw filings are annual, unnormalized, and contain no contacts. Broker names differ or are misspelled from year to year, you can't tell which broker office actually works with the company, premium figures have typos, and company addresses are wrong. Hillwinds cleans, joins, and re-verifies them monthly, attaches validated decision-makers using world-class personnel data, assigns broker offices, and maps carriers — turning a 5500 filing from raw data into an account you can work.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
What is Form 5500 used for?+
Form 5500 is the annual report that employee benefit plans covered by ERISA file with the federal government. It gives regulators — and the public — a yearly snapshot of a plan's finances, participants, funding arrangement, insurers, and service providers, and is used to enforce reporting and disclosure requirements.
Who has to file Form 5500?+
Plan sponsors of ERISA-covered retirement plans (401(k), pension) and welfare plans (health, dental, vision, life, disability). Plans with 100+ participants file the full Form 5500; smaller plans often file Form 5500-SF; and one-participant or owner-only plans file Form 5500-EZ. Some small, fully insured or unfunded welfare plans are exempt from filing.
Is Form 5500 public information?+
Yes. Most Form 5500 filings are public records, published by the Department of Labor as downloadable EFAST2 datasets. Anyone can access them — the challenge is that raw filings are annual, unnormalized, and contain no contact information.
When is Form 5500 due?+
By the last day of the seventh month after the plan year ends — July 31 for a calendar-year plan. Filing Form 5558 grants an automatic 2½-month extension, moving the deadline to October 15 for calendar-year plans.
What benefits does Form 5500 cover?+
Both retirement and health-and-welfare benefits: 401(k) and pension plans, plus medical, dental, vision, life, disability, and other welfare benefits offered through an ERISA plan.
What's the difference between Form 5500, 5500-SF, and 5500-EZ?+
Form 5500 is the full report for larger plans (generally 100+ participants). Form 5500-SF is a short form for eligible small plans. Form 5500-EZ is for one-participant plans, such as an owner-and-spouse business. They differ in required schedules and level of financial detail.
Can 5500 data help me with GTM?+
Yes — for benefits go-to-market teams it's one of the richest starting points there is. On its own a 5500 is a static filing, but Hillwinds maps every filing into a living relationship graph that connects each employer to its broker office, carrier mix, and decision team, joins in validated HR, Benefits, Finance, and leadership contacts from world-class personnel data, and exposes it all through 40+ benefits-native filters, natural language, MCP, and API. That turns raw 5500 filings into targeted account lists you can prospect, enrich into Salesforce or HubSpot, and act on — instead of a spreadsheet of stale records.
Keep reading
Related guides
Schedule A vs. Schedule C
How the two service-provider schedules differ — and what each reveals about carriers, brokers, and commissions.
Self-funded vs. fully insured
The two funding models, how to tell them apart, and how a plan's 5500 gives it away.
Form 5500 data provider
Why benefits GTM teams use Hillwinds instead of raw filings — enriched, verified, and contact-ready.
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