How can I learn what companies in the US have "ERISA" self-funded
insurance plans?  Is there a good source for keeping up with what
companies are filing to start such a plan?  We want to market to these
companies.

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Request for Question Clarification by nauster-ga on 26 Sep 2002 22:11 PDT

Are you aware of the freeERISA website?:
http://www.freeerisa.com/default.asp

Free registration is required, and then you can look through a number
of databases that seem to pertain to what you wanted. How close is
this to what you were looking for? What else would you find helpful?

nauster-ga

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Clarification of Question by beaconmark-ga on 27 Sep 2002 08:07 PDT

Hi Nauster--
Thanks for the effort, I'm checking into it.  It look promising, I
wonder how they gather the data, and what the quality of it is.

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Request for Question Clarification by nauster-ga on 27 Sep 2002 18:35 PDT

From the "About Us" page of that web site:

"All 5500 forms filed with the United States Department of Labor under
the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) are open for
public inspection. The United States Department of Labor makes this
data available to the public. The data on the Form 5500 or schedules,
recreated on freeERISA.com, appears exactly as it has been
electronically transmitted from the DOL."

The Form 5500 public records are not available on the internet
directly from the DoL. You'd have to contact the Disclosure Officer of
the Pension and Welfare Benefits Administration in order to get access
to the ERISA Information System.

I can get you the contact information if you want to try to go
directly to the DoL, but if the freeERISA site has all the information
already (which it seems to), there's probably no need for you to do
that.

Please let me know more when you've had time to find out if that site
has the information you need.

nauster-ga

The Department of Labor gives the following contact information for
the Disclosure Officer of the ERISA Information System:

Distributor: 
                Name: Disclosure Officer 
                Organization: Pension and Welfare Benefits
Administratio
                Street Address: Room N5625 200 Constitution Avenue,
N.W.
                City: Washington 
                State: DC 
                Zip Code: 20210 
                Country: USA 
                Telephone: (202) 219-6999 
                Fax: (202) 219-8141 
Order Process: mail or fax

Between this contact information and the freeERISA site, you should be
able to get all the information you need. If there's more on this
topic you'd like tracked down, please ask for a clarification!

Cheers,
nauster-ga

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Request for Answer Clarification by beaconmark-ga on 02 Oct 2002 08:02 PDT

I want to get the information in bulk, so I can market to the DB, will
the DoL provide it as a database or a delimited file?  Or will
freeERISA?

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Clarification of Answer by nauster-ga on 03 Oct 2002 12:13 PDT

freeERISA doesn't seem to include that ability. However, the DoL
refers to its ERISA Information System as a "datatbase," so that may
well be what you're looking for. The contact info for the Disclosure
Officer is straight from DoL, so should be the way to get the full
information. The DoL definately doesn't provide access to the database
via the internet.
There are also companies that sell pension information. I don't know
if that's the sort of thing you would consider, but I'll include a
sample link just to cover the possibility:
http://www.judydiamond.com/cgi-bin/jda/king

Good job with finding something close to what I was looking for.  The
follow-ups were good, with more info.  Ultimately, I don't have the
perfect answer, but a good combination of answers.