Form 5500 alone cannot measure plan design. It cannot see auto-enrollment, default rates, vesting schedules, advisor type, or Roth availability. So we built a score that does. Plan Rank(k) layers five authoritative data sources into one industry ranking. Here is what 2024 looks like.
Industry rankings have been published annually for a decade. They are useful, widely cited, and incomplete. Here is what gets missed when you measure only what Form 5500 disclosed.
Small plans file Form 5500-SF with no Schedule C. Large plans have a $5,000 threshold and "eligible indirect compensation" exemption. Advisor fees, TPA fees, and bundled wraps are systematically invisible. Any score that calls itself a quality measure but cannot see cost is measuring outcomes, not quality.
Form 5500 does not capture auto-enrollment, auto-escalation, QDIA type, default deferral rate, Roth availability, vesting schedule, eligibility waiting periods, managed account adoption, or advisor type. Every one of those drives participant outcomes more than rate of return does. None are in the legacy score.
The legacy industry score uses a "proprietary weighted formula" with weights its publisher calls "a trade secret." That is a defensible business posture and an indefensible analytical posture. An advisor cannot tell a fiduciary client why their plan scored what it scored. We can.
Plan Rank(k) is a transparent, weighted composite of five data layers. Every component is named. Every weight is disclosed. Every metric traces back to a public or contractually licensed source.
Account balance, participation rate, employee and employer contributions per participant, rate of return, plan age, asset growth, distribution rate, loans outstanding. The Form 5500 baseline. Percentile-ranked within the plan's size cohort, not the full universe.
Auto-enrollment adoption, default deferral rate, auto-escalation, QDIA type, match formula and vesting, Safe Harbor election, Roth availability, deferral eligibility, advisor type, managed account adoption. Mapped to PLANSPONSOR's 51-industry taxonomy via NAICS routing.
Plan-weighted savings rates, promised match averages, participation by sector. Eight aggregated industry sectors covering five million participants across 1,400 plans. Used as a cross-validation lens on the Form 5500 participation data.
Generational balance distributions, target date fund adoption, Roth participation share, loan utilization, employee contribution rate by generation. Twenty-two industries plus generational and plan-size cuts. The "do it for me" trend captured at scale.
Financial objectives prioritization, participant retirement confidence, decumulation gap, behavioral trends. Survey data from 1,500 workers and 500 sponsors plus 8,000 globally surveyed participants. The soft side of plan health.
Click any industry to expand. Sort by any column. Twenty-seven primary industry groupings shown below, derived from the full 51-industry PLANSPONSOR taxonomy with Form 5500 cohort enrichment.
| #▲ | Industry▼ | Plan Rank(k)▼ | Plans▼ | Median Balance▼ | Participation▼ | EE Contrib▼ | ER Contrib▼ | Auto-Enroll▼ | Safe Harbor▼ | Roth Avail▼ |
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These industries clear high marks on filing data, plan design, and participant readiness simultaneously. None of them depend on a single metric to carry the score.
A field-by-field comparison of the dominant legacy industry score against Plan Rank(k). Same Form 5500 baseline. Four additional data sources. Disclosed methodology.
Every claim in this report traces back to a named, cited source. No proprietary black box. No trade-secret weights.