Benefits & ERISA Law

More Form 5500 Information Available on the Internet

By Suzanne Wynn

The New York Times published an interesting article on Feb. 3rd, 2008, about information derived from filed Form 5500s published on a couple of websites. Mary Williams Walsh, in Trying to Clear Fog From Pension Plans, discusses the requirement in the Pension Protection Act which classifies troubled pension plans with the label of “at risk”, “critical” or “endangered”, and websites which can provide that information to participants and beneficiaries for free.

For participants, beneficiaries, and people who are just plain curious, David J. Tananbaum at AtPrime Media has created the Pension Inspector, a database of information from filed Form 5500s which is searchable by company name, plan name, EIN, phone number or state. This database joins FreeErisa.com, a database of filed Form 5500s created and maintained by Judy Diamond Associates. Both databases are searchable for free after the user has registered with the website.

Before making a rollover contribution into a plan, imagine how valuable it is to an employee or particiapnt to have a database providing access to historical Form 5500 information about the plan, even if that information is limited to just a year or two of filings.

Technorati Tags: Pension Protection Act, ppa, Form 5500, pension inspector, FreeErisa.com, Judy Diamond, AtPrime Media, David Tananbaum, Mary Williams Walsh, New York Times, ERISA

Full post as published by Pension Protection Act Blog on February 05, 2008 (boomark / email).