UNITED WAY OF CENTRAL IOWA — UNITED WAY OF CENTRAL IA RETIREMENT PLAN

Form 5500 is the annual return that U.S. employee benefit plans must file with the Department of Labor under ERISA. Every 401(k), pension, profit-sharing, and most welfare benefit plans file one each year, disclosing the plan sponsor, administrator, total assets, participant counts, contributions, and expenses. Large plans (generally 100+ participants) file the full Form 5500 with detailed schedules; smaller plans file the condensed Form 5500-SF. UNITED WAY OF CENTRAL IOWA’s most recent filing for this plan covers the 2023 plan year on Form 5500.

Because Form 5500 filings are public record, anyone can review a plan’s financial health: how much it holds in assets, how many employees participate, what it pays in administrative expenses, and — for large plans via Schedule C — exactly which service providers were paid and how much. 401kHunter ingests the DOL’s complete bulk dataset so this information is searchable across more than one million plans.

401kHunter’s fee grade is a simple A–D letter score computed from each plan’s own filing: total administrative expenses divided by total plan assets. Grade A means expenses are under 0.5% of assets, B is 0.5%–1.0%, C is 1.0%–1.5%, and D is anything above 1.5%. It’s a screening signal, not a verdict — small plans naturally pay more per dollar of assets than billion-dollar plans, and some filings roll investment costs into the administrative line.

Still, the ratio is the fastest public indicator of whether a plan’s participants are getting a fair deal. Industry studies put the average all-in cost of a mid-size plan near 0.5% of assets, with small plans averaging closer to 1.0%–1.3%. A plan consistently grading C or D across multiple filing years is paying above market, and its sponsor has both a fiduciary reason and negotiating leverage to seek better pricing.