Source: 2025 T. Rowe Price Global Retirement Savers Study
Help Center · Bench(k) for Prime Capital
Benchmark a 401(k) plan in under 2 minutes.
Bench(k) compares a plan's design and participant outcomes against 51 industry peer cohorts drawn from PLANSPONSOR, Vanguard, Fidelity, and American Century. Find a plan by EIN or name, adjust the design levers, and generate a cited AI analysis — ready to walk a sponsor through.
Find by EIN or name
Confirm plan design
AI analysis runs
Export report
Form 5500 pre-fill
Search ~870K plans by EIN or plan name. Auto-fills plan details and the matching NAICS industry cohort.
Cited AI analysis
Claude generates ranked strengths, concerns, and opportunities — every stat carries a numbered citation to its source.
Dual-format export
Export as a print-ready PDF for sponsor meetings, or as a self-contained HTML file to share digitally.
Tips
Start by pasting an EIN or typing the plan/company name — the Form 5500 data pre-fills most of the form for you. The peer industry auto-selects from the plan's NAICS code. Hover any icon to see what a field means and why it matters. The AI analysis re-runs automatically as you adjust the plan design, so you can model "what if we added auto-escalation?" in real time.
5 steps, about 90 seconds.
A typical plan review from opening Bench(k) to downloading the client-ready report.
1
Open the app & wait for the plan universe to load
Form 5500 data loads in the background. The status pill at the top of the Plan Identity section turns green ("✓ 869,889 plans loaded") after ~25 seconds — one time per session. Browser caches it for subsequent visits.
2
Find the plan
Paste the 9-digit EIN (dashes optional) or start typing a plan / company name — live dropdown shows matches. Selecting a plan pre-fills plan name, sponsor, average balance, and auto-selects the matching NAICS industry.
3
Confirm plan design
Click through the segmented buttons for match, vesting, auto-enroll, Roth, loans, QDIA. No typing required — every setting is one click. The benchmark report on the right updates live.
4
Wait for the AI analysis
The NOX pulse-wave spinner runs for 15–20 seconds. Claude cross-references your plan against PLANSPONSOR peer data, Vanguard behavior norms, and the Fidelity industry overlay. Ranked strengths, concerns, and opportunities land with numbered citations.
5
Export & deliver
Click Export PDF for a printable report to hand to the sponsor, or Export HTML for a self-contained file you can email or archive. Both exports strip the app chrome and render the report only.
Where the numbers come from.
Every peer stat in the AI analysis carries a numbered citation tied back to one of four authoritative sources. The complete citation list renders below the analysis.
PLANSPONSOR 2026
2026 · 51 INDUSTRIES
Defined Contribution Plan Industry Report — the primary source for industry-cohort benchmarks. 12 industries with full plan-design detail, 39 with headline metrics. Licensed from Asset International / ISS Media Solutions.
Vanguard HAS 2025
2024 PLAN YEAR · BEHAVIOR NORMS
How America Saves 2025. Participant behavior across Vanguard's DC recordkeeping book (~5M participants): deferral rates, auto-enrollment adoption, match capture, hardship / loan trends, Roth participation.
Fidelity BFF Q4 2025
Q4 2025 · 22 INDUSTRIES
Building Financial Futures quarterly report. Fidelity's 22-industry cross-reference + generational segmentation (Boomer/Gen X/Millennial/Gen Z) + plan-size bands. Used as an overlay against PLANSPONSOR numbers.
American Century 12th
2025 · SPONSOR + PARTICIPANT ATTITUDES
12th Annual Retirement Savers Study. 1,500 participants + 500 plan sponsors. Captures the perception gap between how prepared sponsors think employees are and how prepared employees feel they are.
How citations work
The AI is instructed to tag every peer stat with a {{cite:sourceId}} token. The renderer converts those tokens to numbered superscripts and builds the "Sources cited in this analysis" block below the narrative. Claude is explicitly told not to invent statistics — if it doesn't have a source, the claim doesn't appear.
IRS limits and reference data.
Current-year row highlighted. Useful while reviewing plan design vs. statutory maximums.
Contribution limits
Year
Elective Deferral §402(g)
Catch-up (age 50+)
Catch-up (age 60–63)
2023
$22,500
$7,500
—
2024
$23,000
$7,500
—
2025
$23,500
$7,500
$11,250
2026
$24,500
$8,000
$11,250
Compensation & plan limits
Year
Compensation §401(a)(17)
Annual Additions §415(c)
HCE Threshold §414(q)
2024
$345,000
$69,000
$155,000
2025
$350,000
$70,000
$160,000
2026
$360,000
$72,000
$165,000
Key deadlines
Deadline
What’s due
Mar 15
ADP/ACP refunds (calendar-year plans) to avoid 10% excise tax
Apr 15
§402(g) excess deferral distributions
Jul 31
Form 5500 filing deadline (calendar-year plans)
Oct 15
Form 5500 extended deadline (with filed extension)
Dec 1
Safe harbor notice to participants
Dec 31
Discretionary amendments for current plan year
Terms used in this app.
Retirement-plan terminology you’ll encounter in Bench(k) and in the AI analysis.
Auto-Enrollment (AE)
Plan feature that enrolls new hires by default at a preset deferral rate unless they opt out. SECURE 2.0 made this mandatory for most new plans starting 2025.
Auto-Escalation
Annual automatic increase in a participant’s deferral rate (typically 1% per year) up to a cap. Pairs with auto-enrollment to overcome the inertia of low default rates.
Cohort
The industry peer group a plan is benchmarked against. Bench(k) draws cohorts from PLANSPONSOR’s 51 industries, sized by Form 5500 plan counts.
Default Deferral Rate
The % of pay an auto-enrolled participant contributes unless they change it. 30% of auto-enroll plans now default to 6%+.
EIN
Employer Identification Number — the 9-digit IRS identifier that keys the Form 5500 filing. Bench(k) uses it to look up plan details.
Form 5500
Annual report filed by every qualified retirement plan. Public data; Bench(k) indexes the 2024 plan-year filing for ~870K plans.
Full Match Capture
% of participants contributing enough to receive the full employer match. Gaps indicate an education opportunity.
NAICS Code
6-digit industry classification filed on Form 5500. Bench(k) maps NAICS codes to PLANSPONSOR cohorts automatically.
QDIA
Qualified Default Investment Alternative — the default investment for participants who don’t make an election. 66% of plans use a target-date fund QDIA.
Rich vs. Headline
Rich industries have full plan-design detail in PLANSPONSOR. Headline industries have top-5 metrics only, with "All Industries" overlaid for plan design.
Safe Harbor
Plan design that automatically satisfies ADP/ACP testing via prescribed employer contributions. Eliminates refund risk for HCEs.
SECURE 2.0
2022 legislation that expanded retirement-plan access, required auto-enrollment on new plans, and added features like emergency savings and student-loan matching.
Target-Date Fund (TDF)
Investment that rebalances from stocks to bonds as a target retirement year approaches. The most common QDIA choice; used as default in 98% of auto-enroll plans.
True-Up
Annual reconciliation ensuring participants who front-load contributions still capture the full employer match. Only ~22% of plans offer it.
Bench(k) downloads and indexes the entire Form 5500 universe (~870K plans, ~80 MB gzipped) on first load so EIN lookups are instant afterwards. The browser caches it, so subsequent visits in the same session are fast. This is the trade-off for zero-latency EIN search and dynamic cohort counts.
Every qualified ERISA plan files a Form 5500, so virtually all 401(k) plans will appear. If the EIN search comes up empty, you can still enter the plan manually — type the plan name, select the benchmark industry, and fill in the metrics directly. The AI analysis works identically.
Claude ranks observations by magnitude of the peer gap and material impact on participant outcomes. A plan exceeding peer participation by 5 pts is a strength; trailing by 5 pts is a concern. The AI is instructed to be evenhanded — it won’t inflate strengths to sound nice, and it won’t fabricate concerns to seem rigorous.
Fidelity’s recordkeeping book skews toward larger plans with longer-tenured participants, so average balances run noticeably higher than PLANSPONSOR’s broader survey. The AI references both and explains the gap when relevant — for example, Fidelity energy industry balance is $248,300 vs PLANSPONSOR Oil/Gas at $161,904.
Yes — that’s what it’s designed for. Export PDF produces a print-ready document suitable for a plan review meeting. Export HTML produces a self-contained file you can email, archive, or share via a portal. Both strip the app chrome and render only the benchmark report.
Vault(k) is Prime’s forthcoming CRM integration — it will let you save the benchmark report directly to the plan’s record in the advisor system, with a single click. Until Vault(k) ships, use Export PDF or Export HTML and attach the file to the plan record manually.
All 51 PLANSPONSOR industries are in the dropdown, but grouped into two tiers. The top 12 have full plan-design detail (match, vesting, auto-features); the remaining 39 have headline metrics only and overlay the "All Industries" aggregate for plan design. If nothing fits, select "All Industries" — it’s the broadest cohort.
Yes — the plan data you enter is sent to the Bench(k) AI worker (hosted on Cloudflare, called from your browser) which forwards it to Anthropic’s API for analysis. Form 5500 data is already public. Plan-design inputs are transient — neither Cloudflare nor Anthropic stores them; Anthropic does not train on API traffic. No data persists server-side.
Release notes and roadmap.
v2.2 · LATESTApril 2026
What’s in this release
Plan-name autocomplete — type a plan or company name and pick from a live dropdown; no EIN required.
Field tooltips — hover the info icon on any field label for a rich explanation with data source and regulatory reference.
Help Center — this modal. Quick-start, step-by-step workflow, source citations, IRS limits, glossary, FAQ.
Export HTML — download a self-contained HTML version of the report alongside the PDF export.
v2.1March 2026
Earlier release
Claude Opus 4.7 upgrade — richer, more evenhanded ranked analysis.
Fidelity BFF Q4 2025 added as a 4th cited source, with a 22-industry overlay.
Form 5500 pre-fill by EIN — 869K-plan universe indexed in-browser.
NAICS auto-mapping — industry cohort selected automatically from the plan’s NAICS code.
51-industry cohort coverage — up from 12 in v1.
ROADMAPComing soon
Next up
Vault(k) integration — one-click save to the plan’s CRM record.
Browser Rendering PDF — server-side rendered PDFs that are pixel-identical across browsers.
Vanguard HAS 2026 — auto-swap when the 2026 edition drops in June.
Multi-plan comparison — benchmark 3–5 plans side-by-side for prospecting pitches.