DOL Form 5500 ERISA Plan Tracker

Search, filter, and export US Department of Labor Form 5500 ERISA filings from public EBSA FOIA bulk files.

Use this actor to turn large annual DOL ZIP/CSV disclosures into clean plan records for prospecting, compliance research, audits, litigation support, and retirement-market intelligence.

What does DOL Form 5500 ERISA Plan Tracker do?

This actor downloads official DOL EBSA Form 5500 public disclosure files.

It parses the annual filing CSV.

It optionally joins Schedule H financial rows.

It filters filings by year, sponsor, EIN, state, participants, assets, and filing status.

It saves normalized plan records to an Apify dataset.

Each record includes sponsor identifiers, plan identifiers, participant counts, benefit codes, administrator details, Schedule H financial fields when available, and source metadata.

Who is it for?

👔 401(k) advisors can find retirement-plan sponsors by size, state, assets, and filing year.

📊 RIA and wealth-data teams can refresh Form 5500 datasets without handling raw DOL ZIP files.

🧾 ERISA auditors can identify plans with relevant participant or asset thresholds.

⚖️ ERISA litigators can build research lists from public filings.

🏢 Benefits consultants can discover plan sponsors and administrators in specific states.

🧑‍💻 Data engineers can feed normalized records into CRMs, warehouses, dashboards, and enrichment workflows.

Why use this actor?

The raw DOL files are public, but they are large ZIP archives with many columns and inconsistent empty values.

This actor provides a repeatable Apify workflow around those files.

You do not need to manually download ZIPs.

You do not need to write CSV parsing logic.

You do not need a browser session.

You do not need an account with DOL.

You get a clean dataset that is ready for export, API access, scheduling, or integration.

Data sources

The actor uses public EBSA FOIA disclosure ZIP files from askebsa.dol.gov.

The main source is F_5500_{year}_Latest.zip.

When financial enrichment or asset filters are enabled, the actor also downloads F_SCH_H_{year}_Latest.zip.

The actor records the source year, file name, and source URL on every item.

Input options

filingYears selects one or more filing years.

maxItems limits how many matching plan records are saved.

sponsorName matches sponsor name or plan name text.

sponsorEin matches a sponsor EIN exactly, ignoring dashes.

states filters by sponsor/admin US state abbreviations.

planEntityCodes filters by DOL plan entity code.

initialFilingsOnly keeps filings marked as initial.

amendedFilingsOnly keeps filings marked as amended.

minParticipants and maxParticipants filter by active participant count.

minAssets and maxAssets filter by Schedule H end-of-year assets.

includeScheduleH controls whether Schedule H financial fields are joined.

Example input

{
  "filingYears": [2023],
  "states": ["NY"],
  "minParticipants": 500,
  "minAssets": 10000000,
  "maxItems": 100,
  "includeScheduleH": true
}

Output fields

Field	Description
ackId	DOL filing acknowledgement ID
filingYear	Filing year requested
planName	Name of the ERISA plan
planNumber	Sponsor plan number
sponsorName	Sponsor or DFE name
sponsorEin	Sponsor EIN
sponsorState	Sponsor state
administratorName	Plan administrator name
activeParticipants	Active participant count
pensionBenefitCodes	Pension benefit code list
welfareBenefitCodes	Welfare benefit code list
scheduleH	Optional nested financial fields
sourceFile	DOL CSV member parsed
sourceUrl	DOL ZIP URL

Schedule H financial fields

When Schedule H is joined, the nested scheduleH object can include total assets, liabilities, net assets, employer contributions, participant contributions, total contributions, total income, total expenses, net income, and fidelity bond amount.

Not every Form 5500 filing has a Schedule H row.

The field scheduleHAttached tells you whether financial data was joined for that record.

Asset filters only match filings with Schedule H financial rows.

How much does it cost to extract DOL Form 5500 filings?

The actor uses pay-per-event pricing.

There is a small start charge per run.

There is a per-record charge for each saved dataset item.

Current pricing is a $0.005 start event and formula-derived tiered per-record pricing.

The Bronze item price is $0.000028522 per saved plan record, with lower rates for higher Apify tiers.

Use maxItems for predictable run cost.

How to run it

1. Open the actor on Apify.

2. Choose one or more filing years.

3. Add sponsor, EIN, state, participant, or asset filters.

4. Set maxItems to your desired export size.

5. Run the actor.

6. Export the dataset as JSON, CSV, Excel, XML, or RSS.

Prospecting workflow

Start with one recent filing year.

Filter by state.

Add minParticipants to focus on plans above your advisory threshold.

Add minAssets when you need Schedule H financial qualification.

Export sponsor names, EINs, plan names, participant counts, assets, and administrator fields.

Upload the result to your CRM or enrichment system.

Compliance research workflow

Use sponsorEin for a known organization.

Run across the desired years.

Review plan names, filing status, participant counts, and Schedule H fields.

Use ackId, sourceFile, and sourceUrl for traceability back to the DOL disclosure source.

API usage with Node.js

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: process.env.APIFY_TOKEN });
const run = await client.actor('automation-lab/dol-form-5500-erisa-plan-tracker').call({
  filingYears: [2023],
  states: ['NY'],
  maxItems: 100,
  includeScheduleH: true,
});
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(items[0]);

API usage with Python

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient('YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN')
run = client.actor('automation-lab/dol-form-5500-erisa-plan-tracker').call(run_input={
    'filingYears': [2023],
    'states': ['NY'],
    'maxItems': 20,
    'includeScheduleH': True,
})
items = client.dataset(run['defaultDatasetId']).list_items().items
print(items[0])

API usage with cURL

curl -X POST 'https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/automation-lab~dol-form-5500-erisa-plan-tracker/runs?token=YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN' \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"filingYears":[2023],"states":["NY"],"maxItems":20,"includeScheduleH":true}'

MCP integration

Use Apify MCP to call this actor from Claude Desktop, Claude Code, or other MCP-compatible tools.

MCP endpoint:

https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=automation-lab/dol-form-5500-erisa-plan-tracker

Add it to Claude Code with the Apify MCP server:

claude mcp add apify-form-5500 --url "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=automation-lab/dol-form-5500-erisa-plan-tracker" \
  --header "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN"

Claude Desktop MCP server configuration:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "apify-form-5500": {
      "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=automation-lab/dol-form-5500-erisa-plan-tracker",
      "headers": {
        "Authorization": "Bearer YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN"
      }
    }
  }
}

Example prompt:

"Run the DOL Form 5500 ERISA Plan Tracker for 2023 New York plans with at least 500 active participants and summarize the biggest sponsors."

Tips for better results

Use one year first when exploring a market.

Use includeScheduleH: false if you only need sponsor and participant fields.

Use asset filters only when Schedule H enrichment is important.

Use EIN filtering for precise sponsor lookups.

Use state and participant filters for lead generation.

Increase maxItems only after your filters produce the right kind of plans.

Performance notes

The actor is HTTP-only.

It does not use a browser.

It does not use a proxy by default.

It downloads official ZIP files from DOL.

Large year ranges may take longer because each year is parsed independently.

Schedule H joining requires an extra ZIP download per year.

Integrations

Send plan records to Salesforce, HubSpot, or another CRM.

Load the dataset into Snowflake, BigQuery, or Postgres.

Schedule monthly or quarterly runs to refresh your plan universe.

Connect results to enrichment APIs for contact discovery.

Trigger alerts when new or amended filings match your target criteria.

Limitations

The actor depends on DOL public FOIA files being available.

The actor does not infer missing financials when Schedule H is absent.

The actor does not provide legal, tax, or investment advice.

Some plan-type codes require domain interpretation by ERISA professionals.

Legality

This actor uses public US Department of Labor disclosure files.

Users are responsible for complying with applicable laws, contracts, privacy rules, and professional obligations when using exported data.

Do not use the data for unlawful discrimination, harassment, or spam.

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Troubleshooting

Why are no records returned?

Your filters may be too strict. Try one recent filing year, remove asset filters, and lower participant thresholds.

Why is scheduleHAttached false?

Not every Form 5500 filing has a Schedule H row. Welfare plans and smaller filings may not include Schedule H financials.

Why does a run take longer with asset filters?

Asset filters require downloading and parsing Schedule H data before matching Form 5500 rows.

FAQ

Can I search by EIN?

Yes. Use sponsorEin; dashes are ignored.

Can I search multiple years?

Yes. Provide several values in filingYears.

Can I export CSV?

Yes. Apify datasets can be exported as CSV, JSON, Excel, XML, HTML, and RSS.

Does this actor require login?

No. It uses public DOL disclosure files.

Does it scrape live web pages?

No. It processes official FOIA ZIP/CSV files over HTTP.