Retirement Plan Transparency: Opaque Data Hinders Best-Interest Advice 

Although often overlooked in policy debates, the annual disclosures for 401(k)s (and other defined contribution plans) need major improvements to provide useful information to regulators, retirement investors, advisors, and plan sponsors. In this paper, we evaluate the data that regulators collect on these plans on the Form 5500 and recommend ways to improve the quality and completeness of this data.