How to Read a Form 5500 Schedule A Like a Broker

Every group you want to win already published its renewal date, its current broker, and what that broker gets paid. Here is where to look.

Every US employer with a group health plan of 100 or more participants files a Form 5500 with the Department of Labor every year. It is public. Attached to it is Schedule A — and Schedule A is the closest thing this industry has to a prospecting cheat sheet.

Here is what sits in it, line by line:

1. The policy year. Schedule A states when the contract period starts and ends. The end date is the renewal date. Most brokers guess at renewal timing or ask the prospect outright. The filing already told you.

2. The carrier and the broker of record. Part I names the insurance company. The broker or agent who placed the business is listed with their commission — by name. You know who you are competing against before the first call.

3. What the incumbent was paid. Commissions and fees paid to the broker are disclosed in dollars. Not estimated — filed. If the incumbent booked $79,863 on a 170-life group last year, that number is sitting in a federal database.

4. The participant count. Beginning-of-year participants tells you group size, which tells you whether the account fits your book.

The manual method

Go to the DOL's EFAST2 search, look up an employer by name, open the latest filing, download Schedule A, and read the fields above. Budget ten to fifteen minutes per employer once you are fast at it.

That is fine for checking one account before a meeting. It does not work as a prospecting system: a state like Texas has around five hundred employers in the 100–500 life band alone, refiling every year, renewing in every month of the calendar.

The systematic method

The filings are published in bulk. All of them can be read at once, filtered to a size band, sorted by renewal month, and laid next to the incumbent's disclosed compensation. Do that and prospecting inverts: instead of asking "who should I call," the data answers "who renews in October, who holds the account, and what is it worth."

That is exactly what we build. We read every filing in every state each month and produce state renewal files for brokers: employer, city, lives, current broker, renewal month, disclosed commission.

See your state's renewal report — or email for the free sample of twenty.