(and Why Most Data Gets It Wrong)
Form 5500 filings show a broker name, but they rarely show who actually sold the business. Discover why broker attribution is often wrong and how office-level attribution transforms market intelligence.
Form 5500 filings are often treated as a reliable source of truth for understanding broker activity in the group benefits market. A plan exists, a broker is listed, and the assumption is that the relationship is clear.
In reality, that assumption breaks down quickly.
While filings can confirm that coverage is in place, they rarely provide a dependable answer to a much more important question: who actually sold the business, and where? That gap in attribution quietly distorts sales strategy, market analysis, and competitive intelligence across the industry.
At the center of the problem is how filings are submitted. Many brokers use centralized filing hubs, third-party administrators, or parent entities to handle compliance. When that happens, the filing captures the administrative pathway, not the selling relationship.
As a result, production often appears to originate from a single hub or generic broker entity, even when the work was done by a specific local office. Multiple offices may roll up under one name. In some cases, placeholder or shared entities obscure the producer entirely.
A Real Example
Consider Mercer. Their Chicago office often appears on Form 5500 filings as the broker of record, but they didn't actually write the business in San Francisco. The Chicago office serves as a filing hub, handling compliance for plans sold by other offices across the country. Without proper attribution, carriers see Chicago as the producer when the real relationship and opportunity sits in San Francisco.
This is the broker filing hub problem in action. The filing is technically accurate, but context is lost.
When broker attribution is incorrect or incomplete, the downstream effects are subtle but significant.
Over time, these distortions compound. Territory plans misalign. Broker strategies drift away from reality. Teams begin to question the usefulness of the data itself.
Group benefits are sold locally. Relationships are built office by office, and often agent by agent, not through abstract broker entities.
Understanding which office placed a plan, and which qualified agents are associated with that plan, not just which broker name appears on a filing, is what allows carriers to:
Going even deeper, seeing qualified broker agents at the plan level with their contact information transforms attribution from descriptive to actionable. When you can identify the specific agents involved, reach out directly with verified email, phone, and LinkedIn contacts, and understand their books of business, you're not just seeing where business was placed. You're seeing who to build relationships with.
Without that level of attribution, intelligence remains descriptive rather than actionable.
Most tools stop at presenting raw Form 5500 data. They show what was filed, but not what actually happened.
Accurate broker attribution requires interpretation. It means aligning employer location, broker office structures, licensing data, and historical patterns to determine where production truly sits. It also means filtering out filing artifacts that don't reflect selling behavior.
This is the gap Benefeature was built to address. Rather than relying on unprocessed filings, Benefeature models broker relationships at both the office and agent level, preserving the local context that filings alone can't provide. For each benefit plan, you can see the qualified broker agents involved, along with their verified contact information including email, phone, and LinkedIn profiles.
The result is cleaner attribution, more reliable market insight, and data teams can actually trust. You're not just seeing where business was placed. You're seeing who placed it and how to reach them.
Learn more about how our Broker Filing Hub solves the attribution problem with accurate office-level and agent-level reporting for every benefit plan.
Broker attribution isn't a technical detail. It's foundational to understanding the group benefits market.
When carriers rely on filings alone, they see activity without clarity. When attribution reflects reality, strategy becomes more focused, sales efforts become more efficient, and markets start to make sense.
The difference isn't more data. It's better attribution.
See how Benefeature provides accurate office-level attribution and qualified broker agents with verified broker contact information.
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