Retirement plan advice for employers
Every 401(k) plan files a public Form 5500. We read yours before we talk to you, and we put what it reports next to plans the same size: what the plan pays, who it pays, how it tests, and where the audit line sits. One page. No cost. No commitment.
For owners, CFOs, and the person who signs the filing.
Facts from
your own filing.
Nothing else.
Counted from the Department of Labor's Form 5500 files for plans with 50 to 999 participants, received July to October 2026. Our own count, from the public record, before anyone is contacted.
Source: DOL EFAST2 Form 5500 and 5500-SF datasets for the 2025 plan year, "Latest" files dated 25 October 2026; 102,302 single-employer 401(k) plans with 50 to 999 participants holding a balance. Reported fees are amounts paid from plan assets and exclude investment charges inside fund expense ratios. None of this is a statement about any one plan; your own filing is what the review reads.
Who it is for
The owner answers for it, the CFO books the fee, and HR or the controller signs the Form 5500. The review is written so each of them can use it the same afternoon.
For the owner
Participants, plan assets, and the fee the plan reports paying. Those three decide whether the people the plan pays are earning it. The review gives you them, next to plans your size, with the two or three things worth doing about them.
For the CFO or controller
The fee comes out of employee balances, so it never appears on a report you sign, and the company is responsible for it being reasonable anyway. The review is the comparison a committee is supposed to have in writing, built from public data.
For the person who signs the filing
Did every deposit go in on time, will the test pass, and is the fee still right for the size of the plan. Your filing already answers the first two. The review answers the third, and lists what to fix before testing season. Your recordkeeper and TPA stay exactly where they are.
The plan review
Three parts, each read from the plan's own Form 5500 and compared with plans the same size. The filing is the starting point; your current fee schedule and plan documents fill in the rest when we talk.
What the plan reports paying, in dollars and as a share of assets, next to the median for plans its size. Every provider on Schedule C and what each was paid. Stated as reported fees, never as total cost, because fund expense ratios are not on the filing.
Whether the filing reports employee money deposited late, whether it reports corrective distributions, and where the participant count sits against the threshold that requires an independent audit. With the dates that follow from each.
How many eligible employees have a balance, whether the company contributes, and whether the plan enrolls people automatically. The design choices that decide whether a plan passes its test and whether the staff use it.
Your plan, in two measures
Put the plan's reported expenses into the two measures every comparison uses. Use the figures from your own filing, or start with the example.
This is arithmetic, not a judgment. It does not say whether the fee is reasonable or the service sufficient; the review puts the number next to plans your size and names the providers behind it.
Discuss your figuresEnter valid figures above to see the calculation.
For context, the median reported fee on the 2025 filings is 0.40% of assets at 50 to 99 participants, 0.37% at 100 to 249, 0.31% at 250 to 499 and 0.24% at 500 to 999 (our count, DOL data). Reported expenses exclude investment charges inside fund expense ratios and costs the employer pays directly.
Figures shown are not a quote, a savings estimate, or a complete measure of plan cost.
The firm
Everyone else paid by a 401(k) plan is paid to keep it as it is. The recordkeeper, the fund company, the incumbent adviser: none of them is paid to tell you the fee is high or the design is failing the test. We are paid by the employers we advise, and if the review says the plan is fine, that is what it will say.
The people
Advice is given only by a licensed adviser working under a registered investment adviser. The adviser of record for Wexley reviews, the registered firm through which advice is provided, and the advisers on our board will be named on this page, with their registrations, before the first client review is delivered. The registration and the people come first; the names appear when they are real.
Until then, the request form reaches the people building the firm directly, and the disclosures page says exactly where the firm stands.
Before any conversation, we have read the plan's Form 5500 and put it next to plans the same size. The first thing you hear from us is a fact about your plan, not a pitch.
Every statement about a plan is from its own filing, said the way the filing says it. Reported fees are called reported fees. A late deposit is reported, not accused. No savings promised, no performance claimed.
The adviser who reads your filing is the one who runs the review and, if you ask for it, the engagement. The work is not handed to someone you have not met.
The review is about the part of the plan nobody is paid to look at: whether the fee is right for the size and whether the design is what keeps failing the test. Changing providers is never the premise.
If you later ask us to advise the plan, the fee is a flat annual figure or basis points on assets, quoted before anything is signed, and it replaces what the plan pays its current adviser. We take nothing from any provider to a plan we advise.
How it goes
Three steps, the first of which takes two minutes. There is no commitment to replace a provider or to begin an engagement at any point.
Start hereYour company, your role, the plan's rough size and the question on your mind. That is all the form asks.
Fees and providers, deposits and testing, the audit line, participation, each against plans your size. We send it to you, and it is yours either way.
Walk through the page with the adviser who built it. Bring whoever handles payroll deposits; two of the three items on the page usually sit with them. What happens next is your call.
Before you ask
The ones we are asked first, answered the way we answer them on a call.
Every 401(k) plan files a Form 5500 with the Department of Labor, and the filings are public. We read them so that employers do not have to. Nothing about any employee is in the filing or in the review; it carries no participant data.
Most plans this size do, and the review is not an argument against them. It is the fee and design comparison a plan committee is supposed to have in its file every few years, built from public data. Many advisers are glad someone else did it. Do what you like with it.
Nothing for the review. If the company later asks us to advise the plan, the fee is a flat annual figure or basis points on plan assets, quoted in writing before anything is signed, and it replaces what the plan pays its current adviser rather than adding to it. That conversation comes after the page, not before.
No. The review starts from the arrangement you have, and nothing about the recordkeeper or the TPA changes because of it. If a change would ever make sense, it would be a separate decision with its own numbers.
It tells us a great deal: participants, assets, reported fees, the providers paid, whether deposits went in late, whether money was returned after testing, and how many eligible people have a balance. It does not show fund expense ratios or costs the company pays directly. The review says which is which, and the conversation fills in the rest.
Your company name, a work email, your role and the plan's rough size. We find the filing. Please do not send employee records, Social Security numbers or account credentials.
No. Requesting the review starts a conversation and nothing else. Any scope of work, fee and advisory relationship would be agreed separately, in writing, before an engagement begins.
Your next step
Two minutes here. The review comes back to you built from your plan's own Form 5500, and it is yours whether or not we ever speak again.
A page about your plan.
No commitment to change anything.
Received
Keep this reference for any follow-up. You will hear from a person, not a sequence.