From public filing to a benchmark you can act on.

Most private-sector health plans with 100+ participants file a Form 5500 (governmental and church plans are ERISA-exempt and usually do not), and Schedule C names each provider paid $5,000 or more, including your broker. That filing is the spine of the benchmark: what your plan pays its broker, set against what comparable plans pay theirs.

The filings are public, but they land as tens of thousands of separate documents with no comparison built in. We've pulled 360,000+ filings across 82,000+ plan sponsors — plan years 2021–2024, 2025 filings arriving, refreshed monthly as new filings land — normalized the compensation lines, and grouped plans by industry, size, plan type, and geography, so your number has something to sit against the moment you look it up. Because Schedule A itemizes each insurance contract, the benchmark goes a level deeper than the plan total: the commission rate on each benefit line, compared against the same line at peer plans.

The benchmark stands on its own from the public filings. But those run years behind, and your most recent compensation disclosure doesn't.

If you want a comparison that reflects what you're paying now, upload your latest CAA disclosure and we review the document, usually within a business day. You can also confirm or correct what we already have from the filings, or answer four short questions if your plan isn't in them. A reviewed disclosure unlocks your Renewal Talking Points free, plus $500 off Renewal Readiness, our preparation kit for renewal season.

Your documents stay private to your account. A confirmed figure can make your own comparison more current, but it never enters another employer's broker peer benchmark; those cells remain based only on public Form 5500 Schedule A/C filings. Confirm your filing or upload a disclosure.

Your number is set against employers in the same industry, size band, plan type, and geography, with the sample size and source on every cut. If a peer group is too thin to mean anything, we widen it and tell you exactly how far. You won't see a percentile built on four employers and presented as a market.

The headline number is what your broker is paid across every benefit line on your filings, except voluntary coverage that employees pay for (accident, critical illness, hospital indemnity). Every peer is measured the same way: employers with a medical plan, all of their filings added together. Voluntary commission is still shown, next to the headline, and compared on its own rate.

Voluntary and worksite lines. Employees pay these premiums through payroll, so the commission on them comes out of employee money rather than company money. They are excluded from the benchmarked broker-pay total and from peer comparisons, and are shown separately with their commission rate only.

The comparison runs line by line, not just in total: dental, vision, life, disability, stop-loss, and voluntary coverage each carry their own commission-rate distribution, because a blended number can hide a high-rate line inside a low-rate plan. That per-line reasonableness check is what ERISA section 408(b)(2) asks fiduciaries to be able to document.

How funding type is assigned. Form 5500 reports a funding arrangement, not a plain self-funded/insured flag. Plans filed as insurance are grouped as fully insured. Plans filed as mixed or general assets/trust are grouped as self-funded, because in both the employer bears claim risk on at least part of the plan. Most self-funded plans in this dataset are filed as mixed, so a self-funded peer group includes plans that insure some benefit lines and self-fund others. The commission-rate comparisons in each report are line-by-line, so they are unaffected by this grouping; the per-participant comparison is affected, which is why both are shown.

Ask Unbrokered turns your findings into the asks, targets, and dates for this renewal. Renewal Readiness includes the analyst, a one-page game plan, and drafted questions you can send.

A Company Report buyer can ask about the numbers first. Upgrade within 60 days and the $199 counts toward Renewal Readiness. See a sample game plan.