# Schedule A (Form 5500): The Broker's Field Guide

*Benefit Signals — updated 2026-09-13. Canonical: https://benefit-signals.com/resources/schedule-a-form-5500*

Schedule A is the insurance information attachment to the Form 5500. One is filed for each insurance contract held by an employee benefit plan. It discloses the name of the insurance carrier, the contract or identification number, the approximate number of persons covered, the policy or contract year from and to dates, the total commissions and fees paid, the name and address of every agent or broker who received commissions in descending order of amount, and the benefit and contract types covered. It is a public document, open to public inspection.

If you sell group insurance and you have never read a Schedule A, you have never seen your own market with the lights on. It is a two-to-several page attachment that most people skip on the way to the financial schedules, and it happens to contain the four things a competing broker would most like to know about any employer: who the carrier is, what the contract is, what the incumbent broker gets paid, and when the policy year ends.

None of that is leaked or scraped. The form carries the words "This Form is Open to Public Inspection" in its own header, because insurers are required to furnish the information pursuant to ERISA section 103(a)(2) and plans are required to file it under section 104. This page walks the form field by field and translates each one into what it means for prospecting.

Source: [2024 Schedule A (Form 5500), U.S. Department of Labor](https://www.dol.gov/agencies/ebsa/employers-and-advisers/plan-administration-and-compliance/reporting-and-filing/form-5500). Forms and instructions for each plan year are published on that page; filings themselves are searchable through [EFAST2](https://www.efast.dol.gov/).

## Who files it, and how many

The instruction at the top of Part I is the part that trips people up: "Provide information for each contract on a separate Schedule A. Individual contracts grouped as a unit in Parts II and III can be reported on a single Schedule A." So a plan with medical, dental, vision and life may produce four Schedule A records, or fewer if contracts are grouped. One employer can therefore appear many times in the data, which is why joining contracts back to a single sponsor is the first real engineering problem in this category -- and why raw contract counts and employer counts are very different numbers.

Benefit Signals reads 3.2 million Schedule A insurance contracts and resolves them to 85,931 employer groups. 85,788 of those groups carry a filed renewal date.

## Part I, line 1: coverage information

| Line | Label on the 2024 form | What it tells a broker |
|---|---|---|
| 1(a) | Name of insurance carrier | The incumbent carrier, by name. Your competitive starting point. |
| 1(b) | EIN | Carrier identifier -- useful for clean matching across years. |
| 1(c) | NAIC code | Standard carrier code; resolves name spelling variants. |
| 1(d) | Contract or identification number | The exact policy number you will need on a BOR letter. |
| 1(e) | Approximate number of persons covered at end of policy or contract year | Covered lives on this contract -- often a better size read than headcount. |
| 1(f) | Policy or contract year: From | The start of the contract year. |
| 1(g) | Policy or contract year: To | The renewal date. This is the single most useful field on the form. |

Line 1(g) deserves its own sentence. It is an exact date, reported by the insurer, not an inference from an effective month. Sorting a territory by that field is the difference between knowing a group renews "sometime in the spring" and knowing the contract year closes on a specific day -- which is what lets you decide whether this is a call for this week or a note for next quarter.

## Part I, lines 2 and 3: fees and commissions

Line 2 reports two totals: "(a) Total amount of commissions paid" and "(b) Total amount of fees paid." Line 3 then itemizes them. The instruction is explicit: "List in line 3 the agents, brokers, and other persons in descending order of the amount paid."

Line 3 captures, for each person: "(a) Name and address of the agent, broker, or other person to whom commissions or fees were paid," "(b) Amount of sales and base commissions paid," "(c) Amount" and "(d) Purpose" of fees and other commissions paid, and "(e) Organization code."

The truth is, this one line is why the filed record beats any purchased list. It names the incumbent -- not a guess, not an inference from a broker's website, but the entity the carrier actually paid, with an address, ordered by who got the most. Read across two or three years and you can see a seat change hands. Read it against comparable groups and you can see when compensation sits well outside the norm for a group that size.

Two cautions, because misreading this field is common. First, "descending order of the amount paid" means the top entry is the dominant seat, not necessarily the only servicing broker; groups frequently carry a general agent, a wholesaler or a co-broker on the same contract. Second, the amounts are what the carrier paid on that contract for that year, not the total economics of the relationship.

## Part II: investment and annuity contract information

Part II covers "Investment and Annuity Contract Information" -- line 4 is the current value of the plan's interest in the general account at year end, line 5 the value in separate accounts, then contracts with allocated funds (line 6) and unallocated funds (line 7). This part matters for retirement and annuity contracts. For a benefits broker working health and ancillary lines, Part II is usually blank or irrelevant.

## Part III: welfare benefit contract information

This is the benefits broker's part of the form. Line 8, "Benefit and contract type (check all applicable boxes)," carries thirteen boxes: (a) Health (other than dental or vision), (b) Dental, (c) Vision, (d) Life insurance, (e) Temporary disability (accident and sickness), (f) Long-term disability, (g) Supplemental unemployment, (h) Prescription drug, (i) Stop loss (large deductible), (j) HMO contract, (k) PPO contract, (l) Indemnity contract, and (m) Other, with a space to specify.

Line 9 covers experience-rated contracts -- premiums received, earned premium, claims paid, incurred claims, claims charged -- and line 10 covers nonexperience-rated contracts. Line 11 and 12, in Part IV, ask whether the insurance company failed to provide any information necessary to complete the schedule, and if so, what was withheld.

Practically, line 8 is how you scope a market. Writing stop loss? That is box (i), and self-funded groups surface there even when no medical premium is reported. Writing group life? Box (d). And because one contract can carry several boxes, "group health leads" and "group life insurance leads" are two filters on one universe rather than two datasets -- which is the point made at more length in [group insurance leads](https://benefit-signals.com/resources/group-insurance-leads).

## The lag, stated honestly

Form 5500 filings are annual and arrive months after the plan year closes, with extensions available. So a Schedule A is a photograph of a past contract year, not a live feed. That has three implications worth internalizing before you build a process on it.

- **Renewal dates age well.** Contract years are usually stable, so a filed policy year end from a prior filing is still a good predictor of this year's renewal month. Confirm it in conversation; do not discard it.
- **Broker seats age less well.** A broker who left last month will still appear on the most recent filing. That is a reason to read across years rather than trusting a single snapshot.
- **Absence is not evidence.** A group missing from the filed universe may be below the filing threshold, not uninsured. Small employers are the clearest case -- see [group health insurance leads](https://benefit-signals.com/resources/group-health-insurance-leads).

Every group in Benefit Signals carries the year of its most recent filing, so you can see exactly how fresh any record is. No group is presented as newer than it is.

## How to pull a Schedule A yourself, free

- Go to the EFAST2 filing search at efast.dol.gov and search by plan sponsor name or EIN.
- Open the most recent filing for the plan you want and download the full filing, including attachments.
- Find the Schedule A attachments. There may be several -- one per insurance contract, or one per grouped unit.
- Read line 1(a) for the carrier, 1(d) for the contract number, 1(f) and 1(g) for the policy year, line 3(a) for the broker, and Part III line 8 for what is actually covered.
- Repeat for the prior two filing years to see whether the broker seat or the carrier changed.

That procedure takes a few minutes per employer and is completely free. It is also why software exists in this category: doing it for every employer in a state, resolving the name variants, and sorting the result by renewal date is not a task a person completes by hand. The step-by-step lookup version of this is in [how to find a company's insurance carrier](https://benefit-signals.com/resources/find-a-companys-insurance-carrier).

## Where to find the 2024 form and the instructions

The Department of Labor publishes the Form 5500 series forms and instructions by plan year, including the 2024 Form 5500, Form 5500-SF, and the individual schedules such as Schedule A and Schedule H. All filings must be completed and submitted electronically through EFAST2-approved software or IFILE. Start at the [DOL Form 5500 page](https://www.dol.gov/agencies/ebsa/employers-and-advisers/plan-administration-and-compliance/reporting-and-filing/form-5500) for the current forms and instructions, and at [efast.dol.gov](https://www.efast.dol.gov/) to search filings. Benefit Signals is not affiliated with the Department of Labor.

## Frequently asked questions

### What is Schedule A of the Form 5500?

It is the insurance information attachment to the Form 5500. One is filed for each insurance contract held by an employee benefit plan, and it reports the carrier, the contract number, the number of persons covered, the policy year dates, the commissions and fees paid, the agents and brokers who received them, and the benefit and contract types.

### Does Schedule A show the renewal date?

Yes. Part I lines 1(f) and 1(g) report the policy or contract year "From" and "To." The "To" date is the end of the contract year -- the renewal date -- as reported by the insurer, not an estimate.

### Does Schedule A show broker commissions?

Yes. Line 2 reports the total commissions and total fees paid on the contract, and line 3 itemizes them by person -- name and address of the agent, broker or other person, the amount of sales and base commissions, the amount and purpose of other fees and commissions, and an organization code -- listed in descending order of the amount paid.

### Is Schedule A public?

Yes. The form header states "This Form is Open to Public Inspection," and filings are searchable at no cost through the DOL EFAST2 system. Insurers are required to provide the information pursuant to ERISA section 103(a)(2).

### Why does one employer have several Schedule A filings?

Because the instruction is to provide information for each contract on a separate Schedule A, with grouped contracts reportable together. A plan with medical, dental, vision and life coverage can therefore produce several Schedule A records under one EIN. Contract counts and employer counts are not the same number.

### Do small employers file a Schedule A?

Often not. Welfare plans below the filing threshold generally do not file a Form 5500 at all, so the filed universe skews toward groups with meaningful headcount. Absence from the data is not evidence that an employer has no coverage.

### How old is the data on a Schedule A?

Filings are annual and land months after the plan year ends, with extensions available, so a Schedule A describes a past contract year. Renewal dates tend to remain accurate year over year; broker and carrier details are best read across two or three filings rather than one.

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## Every field on this form, for every group in your territory, sorted by whose year closes next.

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## Related reading

- [How to Find a Company's Insurance Carrier (and Broker, and Renewal Date)](https://benefit-signals.com/resources/find-a-companys-insurance-carrier)
- [Group Health Insurance Leads: A Sourcing Guide for Benefits Brokers](https://benefit-signals.com/resources/group-health-insurance-leads)
- [Renewal Date Prospecting: How to Work a Territory by the Calendar](https://benefit-signals.com/resources/renewal-date-prospecting)