ERISA Disclaimer

Last updated: August 2, 2026

Not Legal or Fiduciary Advice

FEEDUCIARY LLC is not a law firm, registered investment adviser, or ERISA fiduciary. The benchmarking reports, data, articles, and other content provided through our platform are for general informational purposes only and do not create any attorney-client, investment advisory, or fiduciary relationship between FEEDUCIARY LLC and any user.

Plan sponsors and fiduciaries should consult with qualified ERISA counsel and independent financial advisors before making any decisions regarding their retirement plan fees, service providers, or related matters.

Benchmark Data Limitations

The benchmark data provided by FEEDUCIARY — our AAB v2 (Average Account Balance) model — is compiled from published, third-party industry sources. These include approximately 20 recordkeeper pricing disclosures and rate cards (such as Guideline, Employee Fiduciary, Vestwell, Fidelity, Empower, and TIAA); the 401(k) Averages Book, 24th Edition (2024); the ICI/BrightScope Defined Contribution Plan Profile (2024); the Deloitte/ICI Defined Contribution Benchmarking Survey; the Encore Fiduciary large-plan recordkeeping study; and NEPC and Callan industry surveys. Typical average account balances by plan size are informed by U.S. Department of Labor Form 5500 aggregate data.

This benchmark data is a point-in-time synthesis of the sources above — not a live data feed and not a database of individual plan filings — and certain plan-size tiers are interpolated between adjacent tiers. It may not reflect current market conditions, regional variations, plan-specific features, or other factors that may affect the reasonableness of fees for a specific plan. Benchmark reports are generated from the figures you enter and are not independently verified by FEEDUCIARY.

A favorable benchmark result (fees below market) does not guarantee that your plan fees are "reasonable" under ERISA. An unfavorable result (fees above market) does not necessarily mean your fees are unreasonable. The determination of whether fees are reasonable under ERISA requires consideration of the specific services provided and their value to the plan, among other factors.

How the Two Fee Percentiles Are Measured

Reports express your recordkeeping fee as two percentiles: one per participant, and one as a share of plan assets. Each is stated as the share of comparable plans your fees fall below, so a higher number is better. Both are shown because recordkeepers do not price alike — some quote a flat rate per participant, others quote basis points on assets — and a plan can therefore sit high on one measure and at market on the other without either being wrong.

These are measured from actual filings, not modeled. They are computed from the U.S. Department of Labor's EFAST2 Form 5500 research datasets: Schedule C direct compensation to service providers carrying a recordkeeping service code, summed per plan and joined to that plan's end-of-year assets and participant count. Both percentiles are drawn from the same population of plans, so they cannot contradict one another about which plans are expensive.

They measure direct compensation only, and therefore understate all-in cost. Direct compensation is what a provider is paid from plan assets. It excludes revenue sharing, 12b-1 fees, sub-transfer-agency payments and similar indirect compensation, and it excludes any fee your employer pays the provider by invoice. Schedule C does contain an indirect compensation field, but filers may instead elect the “eligible indirect compensation” alternative, which requires describing the arrangement without pricing it; a dollar figure is reported on well under a tenth of provider records. A distribution built on that field would describe only the minority who itemised, so we do not use it. No public dataset captures revenue sharing across the market.

Coverage is limited to larger plans. Schedule C is filed with the full Form 5500. Plans with roughly fewer than 100 participants generally file the abbreviated Form 5500-SF and are absent from the comparison entirely. Where a plan-size tier holds too few filings to describe a market, no percentile is shown for that tier rather than a thin one presented confidently.

“Comparable plans” means 401(k) plans in the same asset-size tier — not plans matched on industry, geography, participant demographics, service scope, plan design, or any other characteristic. Two plans of similar size may receive materially different services for the same fee, and neither percentile accounts for that. A favourable percentile does not establish that your fees are reasonable under ERISA, and an unfavourable one does not establish that they are unreasonable. Both are inputs to a fee review, not a substitute for one.

Why Two Plans Paying the Same Amount May Not Be Comparable

Every comparison in a FEEDUCIARY report — against filed data, against published provider schedules, or against our benchmark ranges — carries two limitations that no fee figure on its own can express. Both matter when you rely on a report to support a fee decision.

Fees vary with the services actually provided. Two plans paying an identical amount may receive materially different services. One provider's price may include third-party administration, compliance testing, payroll integration, participant advice, trustee or custodial services, or fiduciary responsibility under ERISA Section 3(16) or 3(38); another may charge separately for those, or not offer them at all. A plan that appears expensive may be buying more, and a plan that appears cheap may be buying less and paying elsewhere for the difference. Comparing totals without comparing scope can point a fee review in exactly the wrong direction, which is why a benchmark is a prompt to examine your service agreement rather than a conclusion about it.

Fees vary in how they are paid, and some are not visible. Direct compensation is billed or deducted openly — an invoice to the employer, or a charge against plan assets that appears as a line item. Indirect compensation is paid by the investments themselves: revenue sharing, 12b-1 fees, sub-transfer-agency payments and similar arrangements, which are netted out of fund returns and never appear as a charge a participant or sponsor can see. Two plans reporting the same direct cost can therefore carry very different total costs.

This has a specific and important consequence for the figures we measure from Form 5500 filings, which capture direct compensation only. A plan whose provider is paid substantially through revenue sharing will appear in that data as paying less than it does. Our comparison set therefore understates true cost for those plans, and a plan that pays its provider transparently and entirely in direct fees may score worse than a plan paying more in total through arrangements the filing never shows. Schedule C does contain an indirect compensation field, but filers may elect an alternative reporting method that describes the arrangement without pricing it, and a dollar figure appears on well under a tenth of provider records. No public dataset captures indirect compensation across the market.

The practical implication for a plan fiduciary is that a fee benchmark is a starting point. Establishing that your fees are reasonable under ERISA requires understanding what you receive for them and what your providers are paid in total, from every source — which is the purpose of your 408(b)(2) disclosure, and a question worth putting to your providers directly.

Form 5500 Reference Data

Reports may also display reference figures drawn from the U.S. Department of Labor's EFAST2 Form 5500 research datasets. Unlike the benchmark bands described above, these are actual amounts reported by filers rather than a model. They are shown as market context only.

This reference data measures a different quantity from your benchmark result and the two are not directly comparable. It reflects administrative expenses paid out of plan assets as reported on Schedule H. It therefore excludes fees an employer pays directly from company funds, and excludes investment fund expense ratios and any revenue sharing contained within them. A plan whose employer pays its provider directly may report little or no administrative expense while still paying substantial fees. For this reason FEEDUCIARY does not calculate your plan's position within this data, and you should not treat your benchmark figures as comparable to it.

Coverage is limited to plans that file Schedule H — generally those with 100 or more participants. Plans filing the short-form 5500-SF are not represented. Figures are drawn from a single plan year, reflect filings as published by the Department of Labor at the time of extraction, and are not independently audited or verified by FEEDUCIARY. Filings are excluded from our tables where required data is missing or where reported values are implausible on their face.

No Guarantee of Accuracy

While we make reasonable efforts to ensure the accuracy of our benchmark data, FEEDUCIARY LLC makes no representations or warranties of any kind, express or implied, about the completeness, accuracy, reliability, suitability, or availability of the information, products, services, or related graphics contained on the platform for any purpose.

Commercial Relationship and Independence of Results

FEEDUCIARY LLC is a commercial business. We offer free and paid subscription tiers, and we may offer paid services such as a more in-depth fee benchmarking review or assistance with a formal Request for Proposal (RFP) process. The information you provide about yourself and your plan — including your benchmark results — may be used to contact you about those services. See our Privacy Policy for details and for how to opt out.

Because we may contact you as a result of your benchmark outcome, we want to be explicit about how that outcome is produced. Benchmark results are generated by a deterministic, rules-based model applied uniformly to the figures you enter and to the published third-party data described above. Results are not adjusted, weighted, or otherwise influenced by whether you are a prospective customer, by your subscription tier, or by any commercial interest FEEDUCIARY may have in selling you additional services. The same inputs produce the same output for every user.

FEEDUCIARY LLC is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or compensated by any recordkeeper, third-party administrator, investment manager, or financial advisor named in our reports, comparisons, or educational content. We receive no compensation for the inclusion, placement, ranking, or omission of any service provider in a benchmark report or RFP comparison.

Referrals to independent advisors. If you tell us you want hands-on help beyond what our tools provide, we can introduce you to an independent third-party advisor team. We do this only at your request and with your authorization, and we receive no referral fee, revenue share, or other compensation for making the introduction. Our benchmark results are not influenced by the possibility of a referral.

An introduction is not a recommendation, an endorsement, or a representation that the advisor is suitable for your plan, and it is not a fiduciary recommendation regarding your plan's service providers or investments. FEEDUCIARY does not become a fiduciary to your plan by making an introduction. Selecting and monitoring a plan service provider is itself a fiduciary act: you remain responsible for evaluating any advisor you engage — including reviewing their Form ADV, fee schedule, services, and fiduciary status — and for documenting that evaluation as part of your own prudent process.

Nothing in this section, and no communication you receive from us, changes the fact that FEEDUCIARY does not act as a fiduciary to your plan. A marketing communication from FEEDUCIARY is not a recommendation, is not advice, and should not be treated as a fiduciary determination that your plan's fees are or are not reasonable.

Fiduciary Documentation

A FEEDUCIARY benchmark report may be used as one component of a broader fee review process for fiduciary documentation purposes. However, it should not be the sole basis for your fee reasonableness determination. ERISA requires plan fiduciaries to engage in a prudent process for reviewing fees, which typically includes obtaining and reviewing service provider disclosures, comparing fees to alternatives, and documenting the review process.

Consult Qualified Professionals

We strongly recommend that plan sponsors and fiduciaries:

• Work with an ERISA attorney for plan-specific legal guidance
• Engage an independent fiduciary advisor or investment consultant
• Conduct periodic formal RFP (Request for Proposal) processes
• Document all fee review activities in plan fiduciary records
• Review service provider disclosures (408(b)(2)) annually

Limitation of Liability

In no event shall FEEDUCIARY LLC be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages arising out of or related to your use of our platform or reliance on any information provided, even if FEEDUCIARY LLC has been advised of the possibility of such damages.

For questions about this disclaimer, contact us at help@401kfeeduciary.com