Benefits Brokers
Form 5500 Schedule A teardowns, peer commission benchmarks, and prospect target lists for self-funded employer accounts. Five minutes from sponsor name to RFP packet.
How it works
Real reports built from a public Form 5500 filing. Sponsor name anonymized; every number is from an actual 2024 plan-year disclosure.
Full walkthrough: How a benefits broker uses Schedule A to displace an incumbent
Query
“Pull the Form 5500 for [Prospect, Inc.]. Surface every Schedule A carrier with persons covered, charges paid, broker commission, and commission rate. Benchmark each rate against peer cohorts of the same benefit type at 1,500 to 3,000 covered lives.”
Prospect (anonymized) | 2,142 covered lives | 2024 plan year
Wrap plan, unfunded | General assets + insurance | Sched H: not filed | Sched C: not filed
| Carrier | Benefit | Lives | Charges | Commission | Rate | Flag |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| National Life + LTD carrier | Life, LTD | 2,142 | $736,818 | $73,851 | 10.0% | Above P50 |
| Vision Service Plan | Vision | 1,580 | $292,433 | $5,056 | 1.7% | At market |
| Hawaii regional health | Health, dental, vision, drug | 61 | $448,358 | $0 | 0.0% | Small pop |
| Expat health carrier | Health, drug | 1 | $28,044 | $2,244 | 8.0% | Edge case |
| Behavioral / Optum ASO | Behavioral health | 2,364 | $34,138 | $0 | 0.0% | Investigate |
| Benchmark | P25 | P50 | P75 | Prospect | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Life-benefit commission rate, 1,500-3,000 covered lives, 2023 | 4.8% | 8.9% | 13.0% | 10.0% | Above P50 |
| Stop-loss premium per life, 500-5,000 covered lives, 2023 | $454 | $799 | $1,233 | Not on file | Employer-policyholder? |
Follow-up query
“Flag suspicious lines. Specifically, $0 commission on populations above 500 lives, missing Schedule C disclosure, and any commission rate above P75 of cohort.”
Three findings worth raising in the meeting
Follow-up query
“Build a target list. Self-funded employers in the Tacoma metro, 500-3,000 participants, where the most recent Schedule A shows a life-benefit commission rate above P75 for the cohort. Top 5 by lives.”
Sponsor names anonymized for this demo. Real output includes EIN, sponsor address, and admin contact for CRM import.
| Sponsor | Metro | Lives | Life carrier | Commission (rate) | Flag |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sponsor A | Tacoma, WA | 1,640 | United Concordia | $94,200 (12.4%) | Above P75 |
| Sponsor B | Tacoma, WA | 2,210 | Reliance Standard | $71,800 (11.1%) | Above P75 |
| Sponsor C | Olympia, WA | 920 | Mutual of Omaha | $28,400 (9.7%) | Above P50 |
| Sponsor D | Tacoma, WA | 3,050 | Hartford | $140,200 (11.8%) | Above P75 |
| Sponsor E | Seattle, WA (south) | 1,140 | Lincoln Financial | $42,100 (10.6%) | Above P50 |
What you can ask
Each prompt runs against real Form 5500 data. Follow-ups carry context across the conversation, the way an analyst would.
RFP teardown for a known prospect
“Pull the Form 5500 history for [Sponsor Name]. Surface every Schedule A carrier with commission rate, benchmark each against peer cohorts at the prospect's covered-life count, and build the cover paragraph for the meeting.”
The five-minute RFP packet. Cover paragraph quotes the prospect's own filing back at them with peer-cohort context.
“Was Schedule C filed in any of the last three years? If not, flag that as a question. If yes, surface every service provider and the direct + indirect compensation columns.”
Schedule C presence or absence is a fiduciary-conversation trigger.
“Pull the same teardown for the three closest competitors in their NAICS code at similar headcount. Build a one-page comparison.”
Turn one prospect into four. Same query shape.
Without Medistill
FreeERISA lookup, PDF screenshot, Excel notes. No peer benchmark. 1-2 days per packet.
Target list for a metro
“Self-funded employers headquartered in Tacoma, WA, with 500-3,000 participants. Filter to plans where the most recent Schedule A life-benefit commission rate sits above the cohort P75. Top 25 by covered lives.”
Build a quarter of warm leads in under a minute. CRM-ready output with sponsor name, EIN, address, plan admin contact.
“Same query for NAICS 622 (hospitals) within 50 miles. Expand to Seattle and Olympia metros.”
Geographic + vertical pivots in one line each.
“Which of these sponsors filed no Schedule C in the most recent year? Sort by lives descending.”
Layer the fiduciary-flag filter on top of the commission filter.
Without Medistill
Buy a list-broker file (no commission flags), or run FreeERISA city-by-city manually. Half a day to a full day.
Renewal defense for an existing client
“Pull our client [Sponsor] and benchmark every Schedule A carrier commission against peer cohorts. Where do we sit versus market? Build the page I bring to the renewal meeting.”
Same teardown turned inward. Renewal defense is the other half of the producer's calendar.
“Show the trend across the last five filing years for our commission disclosed on each contract. Is the trajectory rising, flat, or falling?”
Anchor the renewal conversation in the multi-year context the client controls.
Without Medistill
Carrier-supplied comp summary, no peer benchmark, no multi-year trend.
Direct-contracting / specialty pharmacy fit screen
“Self-funded employers in [metro] with 1,000+ lives and high PBM exposure flags. Which carry a PBM carve-out on Schedule A or list a PBM on Schedule C?”
Targeting for direct-pharmacy-contracting and compounding-pharmacy plays. PBM exposure is the buy-trigger.
“For the ones with PBM carve-outs, layer in state PBM transparency law jurisdictions. Which states have pending disclosure rules that strengthen the case?”
Join Form 5500 to the state PBM law tracker for a regulatory hook.
Without Medistill
Not done. Most brokers do not have PBM contract data joined to Form 5500.
Vendor-stack mapping across a book
“Across my book of 30 self-funded clients, who has Aetna ASO, who has Cigna, who has UHC? Group by TPA. Show carrier consolidation by region.”
Reverse the teardown. Producer-level book intelligence for QBR prep and carrier negotiations.
“For my UHC ASO clients, what is the disclosed broker commission distribution? Median, P25, P75 across the book.”
Internal benchmarking for fee conversations across the same producer's clients.
Without Medistill
Spreadsheet maintained by hand, drifts out of date quarterly.
Fiduciary review packet
“Pull Schedule H Part IV for any of my clients who filed it (VEBA trusts). Flag any Line 4a non-zero amounts (late participant contributions), Form 5330 obligations, or fidelity bond inadequacies.”
When a client files Schedule H, the compliance signal is rich. Most producers do not read it.
“For clients without Schedule H (the 95% on unfunded plans), surface the Schedule A funding flags and any 'plan paid' indicators that suggest plan-level cash flow.”
Even without Schedule H, the main form encodes plan-level cash-flow signals worth reading.
Without Medistill
Read the PDF. Hope nothing is buried in Part IV.
Why switch
FreeERISA, Wrangle 5500, ERISApedia, Benefeature, Zywave Broker Briefcase: useful tools, none of them assembled around the prospect packet a producer actually walks in with.
Pull a sponsor's Form 5500
Pull a sponsor's Form 5500
Single-record portal lookups, one filing at a time
Plain-English query, full history returned with Sched A, C, H joined
Peer commission benchmark
Peer commission benchmark
Manual download, normalize in Excel, build cohort by hand
Real-time percentile distribution by benefit type and headcount band
Target list of self-funded employers
Target list of self-funded employers
List broker data files or per-sponsor exports, no commission flags
Filter by metro, NAICS, size, funding type, commission rate flag. Under a minute.
Schedule C indirect comp surfaced
Schedule C indirect comp surfaced
Schedule C visible but not flagged or benchmarked
Always, plus flag when Schedule C is missing on a plan that should have filed
Flag $0 commission on large covered populations
Flag $0 commission on large covered populations
Manual review, contract by contract
Automatic. Suspicious lines surfaced in the teardown
Stop-loss premium-per-life benchmark
Stop-loss premium-per-life benchmark
Manual cohort build
Live percentile cohort, plans 500 to 5,000 lives
Compliance flags from Schedule H Part IV
Compliance flags from Schedule H Part IV
Buried in PDF, read by hand
Parsed and surfaced when Schedule H is filed (~5% of welfare plans, mostly VEBAs)
Output format
Output format
PDFs and screenshots
Tables, tables, tables. Copy or export.
Conversational follow-ups
Conversational follow-ups
Re-export, re-filter, re-merge
Ask 'now show me only the plans with above-cohort commission' in one line
PBM contract terms layer
PBM contract terms layer
Not in the 5500 toolset; separate research
Federal and state PBM contracts joined and queryable
Price
Price
$3K-$15K/yr per producer
from $199/mo
Data coverage
Form 5500 main filing
Schedule A
Schedule C
Schedule H, Part IV compliance
Peer cohort engine
PBM contract terms
State PBM transparency laws
Plan sponsor enrichment
Compliance and exclusion
Form 5500 teardowns, peer commission benchmarks, target lists, fiduciary flags. One conversation, from $199/month.