Read your own Form 5500 in ten minutes

Every retirement plan you sponsor files an annual return with the Department of Labor, and that filing is public. Yours is sitting on a government website right now, readable by anyone who cares to look — including your employees.

Most owners have never read it. That is not negligence so much as habit: the filing is prepared by the recordkeeper, signed under time pressure, and filed. It goes out the door as paperwork rather than as information.

Where the filing lives

Search the Department of Labor's public disclosure site for your company name. Pull the most recent year available. If your plan is small, you are probably looking at a Form 5500-SF rather than the full form.

The participant count

Start with the participant count at the beginning and end of the plan year. If the number moved sharply and your headcount did not, something in the plan's administration changed — eligibility, auto-enrollment, or a forfeiture cleanup.

The plan characteristic codes

These are two-character codes describing what the plan actually offers. Code 2R indicates a self-directed brokerage window is available. It appears on line 8a of the full Form 5500 or line 9a of the 5500-SF.

What came out of plan assets

Look for what the plan paid, and to whom. On the short form the detail is thin by design. That thinness is itself information: if you cannot tell from your own filing who was paid what, neither can your employees.

Ten minutes gets you these three answers. What you do with them is the harder question, and it is the one a review is for.