How to find your plan's Form 5500 and Schedule A

Step-by-step: searching the Department of Labor's EFAST2 site, finding the attachments, and what to check.

Your own plan's Form 5500 is public. If your company sponsors a benefit plan, or you want to understand another plan, you can look up the filing in a few minutes. This guide walks through it and points out common snags. General information, not advice.

1. Know what you are looking for

Gather the sponsor's legal name, its employer identification number (EIN) if you have it, the plan name, and the plan year. If you have several plans, such as a health plan and a 401(k), each files separately and has its own plan number. The form instructions say plan numbers for plans providing only welfare benefits start at 501, so confirm which plan is which from your own records.

2. Use the EFAST2 public search

The Department of Labor's Employee Benefits Security Administration runs EFAST2 for electronic filing. DOL's Form 5500 page links to the public Form 5500 filing search at efast.dol.gov/5500Search. Search by plan name, sponsor name, EIN or plan year. Try a few spellings of the sponsor name, with and without "Inc." or "LLC", and search by EIN if the name finds nothing.

3. Pick the right filing

DOL describes three forms: Form 5500, Form 5500-SF (the short form for small plans) and Form 5500-EZ (for one-participant retirement plans and some foreign plans). Insurance schedules, including Schedule A, are attached to the Form 5500 and 5500-SF filings of plans with insured contracts. Choose the filing for the plan number and year you want. Check whether a later amended filing replaces an earlier one.

4. Open the attachments

Each filing has a PDF with the form and its schedules. Schedule A appears once per insurance contract. It shows the carrier, contract number, policy dates, the number of people covered, and, in Part I, the commissions and fees reported for each agent or broker. Per the form instructions, line 3 lists those paid in descending order of amount.

5. What to check

• The broker named is the one you expect, including the address.
• Commissions and fees are consistent with what your broker has told you.
• Any description of fees, such as "consulting" or "bonus", is explained.
• Carriers listed match your policies. A carrier you do not recognize may be from a prior period or a contract held by an affiliate.

Worked example (made-up numbers): Example Co. has medical and dental policies. Its filing shows two Schedules A. The medical one reports $18,000 in commissions to Broker X and $4,000 in fees. The dental one reports $1,500 in commissions to the same broker. Example Co. adds these to $23,500 and asks Broker X to reconcile that with the compensation statement it provided.

6. Compare across years

The search lets you open prior years. Check whether reported compensation moved with premium, with the number of covered people, or with a change of carrier. Ask your broker to explain any large change. Note that DOL's instructions allow insurers to allocate commissions on a reasonable basis, so contract-level figures can shift for allocation reasons.

Bulk data

To work with many filings at once, DOL publishes the data as downloadable files on its datasets page. This site uses the Schedule A Part 1 file and the main Form 5500 file for the 2024 plan year. Files are large and organized by plan year, and each comes with a layout describing the fields.

When you cannot find it

Filings can be late, amended or missing, and some plans do not file. Under the instructions, a welfare plan that covered fewer than 100 participants at the beginning of the plan year and is unfunded, fully insured, or a combination, is generally exempt from filing, subject to conditions set out in the instructions. A missing filing does not by itself mean something is wrong. Ask your plan administrator.

Next steps

Read how to read Schedule A broker compensation and use questions to ask your benefits broker to discuss what you find.

Reading what you find, step by step

Take line 2 first: the total fees and commissions for the contract. Then look at line 3: each person paid, the commission column, the fee column and the stated purpose of fees. Divide line 2 by the premium on your invoices to get a rough percentage. That ratio is not a standard to be met. It is only a way to ask your broker how the figure was reached. Check the covered period too: a policy year that straddles two plan years can look like a jump when it is a timing difference.

Common snags

• The sponsor name on the filing may be a parent company or an older name.
• Some plans file a combined Form 5500 for several welfare benefits, so one filing can carry several Schedules A.
• Very recent years may not yet be posted. Searching the previous year is a good fallback.
• Large employers may have several carriers, so the list of brokers can be long. Read all of line 3.

A short checklist

1. Write down sponsor name, EIN, plan name and plan year.
2. Search EFAST2 and note every filing that appears for the plan.
3. Download the PDF and find each Schedule A.
4. For each, note the carrier, covered lives, line 2 total and line 3 names and amounts.
5. Repeat for the prior two years and note changes.
6. Bring the list to your next renewal meeting.

If you are looking at another employer's plan to learn how a broker's work looks in practice, remember the filing is about that plan only. It does not tell you what a broker would charge or deliver for yours.

Updated 2026-10-02.

General information only, current as of the date above. The information on Benefits Broker Atlas is not a recommendation or a guarantee of anyone's work. A license record shows registration status on the date shown, not workmanship, insurance coverage at the time of your job, or suitability for your project. Confirm license, insurance and permits directly before you hire. Rules and programs change; check the official sources linked in this guide.