Fundz for Benefits Brokers and Retirement-Plan Advisors
A complete blueprint for employee-benefits brokers and consultants, 401(k) and retirement-plan advisors, and PEO / HR-tech sellers — finding plan sponsors at the moment their benefits actually get re-shopped, with the incumbent carrier and the current broker’s commissions named before the first call.
Every group plan you will ever win is currently someone else’s client. Benefits is a displacement business: the sponsor already has a carrier, a broker of record, and a renewal date. The whole game is showing up in the window when the incumbent is actually re-evaluated — and knowing, before the first call, who you’re displacing and what they’re paid.
The public record already names all of it. Form 5500 filings disclose the plan, its participant count, its plan-year end (the renewal cadence), and — on Schedule A — the incumbent insurance carrier and the commissions and fees paid to the current broker of record. Fundz ingests the full DOL corpus (1M+ filings a year), matches sponsors to the companies in its funding and hiring graph, and re-scores the cross-references every morning.
The fusion is the edge. A 5500 extract tells you a plan exists. Fundz tells you the sponsor also raised capital eight months ago, doubled headcount past the participant count it filed with, and has a plan year ending in 90 days — the three forces that turn a renewal from a rubber stamp into an open decision.
The Benefit Plans in Play chip + its daily alert. Thousands of companies that raised in the last 24 months and have a Form 5500 on record, score-ranked by funding recency, plan-renewal proximity, the headcount-vs-participant gap (“outgrowing their plan”), and whether Schedule A names the incumbent. Each company’s profile shows the carrier, the broker of record, and what that broker is paid — your displacement brief, pre-assembled. Turn on the alert and new entrants land in your inbox the morning they qualify.
What you’re competing against, and why this wins. Raw 5500 extract vendors sell static annual snapshots — no funding context, no headcount delta, no daily re-score, no alerting. Generic sales databases have headcount but no plan, carrier, or commission data at all. Fundz fuses the filing record with live funding + hiring signals and pushes the change to you.
Money in Motion + Benefit Plans in Play, run as a pair. Money in Motion catches executives joining freshly funded companies — a new comp package and a 401(k) left behind at the old employer, the cleanest rollover-conversation trigger in public data. Benefit Plans in Play catches the sponsor side: funded companies whose retirement plan is now undersized for their headcount — the plan-advisory takeover window. Both chips re-score daily and both carry the same one-click daily alert.
Why the pair matters. The same event — fresh capital — creates both an individual prospect (the arriving exec) and an institutional one (the plan that needs re-sizing). Most advisors work one side blind to the other; running both chips means each signal compounds the other.
Benefits and retirement-plan work is won in windows: the plan-year renewal, the funding round that resets the benefits budget, the headcount ramp that breaks the current plan’s economics, the leadership change that re-opens vendor decisions. Outside those windows, the incumbent wins by default — inertia is the strongest carrier in the market.
Most brokers prospect from static lists: a 5500 extract bought annually, sorted by participant count, cold-called top-down. The list answers who has a plan. It can’t answer whose plan decision is open right now — which is the only question that matters. Fundz answers it every morning.
- Employee-benefits brokers and consultants — group health, dental, vision, life/disability. The displacement motion: renewal timing + incumbent carrier + the current broker’s Schedule A commissions.
- Retirement-plan advisors — 401(k)/403(b) plan advisory and individual wealth via rollovers. The pair motion: undersized plans at funded sponsors + executives in motion with stranded accounts.
- PEOs, payroll, and HR-tech sellers — benefits-adjacent platforms sold into the same window. Fresh capital + headcount ramp + a plan on record is the qualified-account definition; the chips are the account list.
Step 1: Open the Benefit Plans in Play chip
On /companies, click the Benefit Plans in Play chip. You’re looking at every company with a verified raise in the last 24 months and a Form 5500 on record, score-ranked. Add your territory with the Location filter and your verticals with Industry. Sort stays on Score — renewal proximity and the outgrowing-their-plan gap are already in it.
Step 2: Turn on the daily alert
In the chip’s explainer banner, click “Email me new entries daily.” One email after the morning re-score, only on days new companies enter the cohort — each with its renewal window, incumbent carrier, and score. Silence on no-news days is deliberate.
Step 3 (retirement-plan advisors): repeat for Money in Motion
Same page, Money in Motion chip, same alert toggle. Executives who joined funded companies in the last 180 days — the appointment headline, the move date, and the funding date on every row.
Step 4: Look yourself up in the Broker Directory
Open /benefits-intelligence → Broker Directory tab and search your own firm, then your three biggest local competitors. Filings carried, sponsors served, commission volume — this is the competitive map you’ll work from in the directory section below.
Step 5: Set your ICP profile
At /account, set your industries, territory, and target company size. This drives the Daily Leads scoring and the Daily Brief, so the AI surfaces plan sponsors that actually fit your book.
Sources & further reading
This playbook is grounded in published research and practitioner literature. Every statistic above links inline to its source; here’s the consolidated list for the curious.
The underlying public record
- DOL / EBSA — Form 5500 Datasets — the filing corpus: plans, participants, plan years, Schedule A
- DOL — Form 5500 Series overview — who files what, and when (up to 9.5 months after plan-year end)