The U.S. Department of Labor's Employee Benefits Security Administration has announced that the general public can now access online datasets of Form 5500 annual report/returns for approximately 800,000 retirement, health and other employee benefit plans that cover the plan years 1999 through 2008.
The Form 5500 annual report/returns are a primary source of information about the operations, funding and investments of employee benefit plans governed by the Employee Retirement Income Security Act. Retirement and welfare benefit plans required to file an annual return/report regarding their respective financial conditions, investments and operations each year generally satisfy that requirement by filing the Form 5500 and any required attachments. These datasets are the raw data from all of the filings for each year, including the data in the various schedules.