SHINSTROM & NORMAN, INC — SHINSTROM & NORMAN, INC. PROFIT SHARING 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. SHINSTROM & NORMAN, INC’s most recent filing for this plan covers the 2023 plan year on Form 5500-SF.

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: admin expenses ÷ the larger of beginning- and end-of-year plan assets. On the standard scale (defined contribution plans with $100K or more), 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%. Smaller plans and pension plans are graded on their own scales against similar plans (see the methodology). 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. Grades cover retirement plans with at least $10K in assets ($100K for defined benefit pension plans). Defined contribution plans with $100K or more are graded on the standard scale; smaller plans are graded on a small-plan scale against plans of similar size, and defined benefit pension plans on a pension scale against pension plans of similar size, because a flat fee or PBGC premiums make their ratios incomparable with larger 401(k)s. Welfare and other non-retirement filings, multiemployer plans and pooled investment entities are not graded, and neither is a plan that lost most of its assets during the year or a filing whose ratio is beyond its scale's plausible ceiling (5% on the standard scale), which almost always reflects a reporting error rather than a real fee.

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.