Noise vs. signal
Most raw "signals" are reporting artifacts, not distress. An asset drop can be a spin-off, not flight.
Plan Vector ranks single-employer 401(k) plans over $100M by a multi-year switch-readiness signal, cleansed of reporting artifacts — so your team spends billable hours on plans with real intent, not accounting noise.
Form 5500 Every figure traces to a public DOL Form 5500 filing line. Benchmarks, not quotes. Plan Vector is a paid product operated by ThinkNirvana LLC, separate from the free Fiduciary Shield published by ThinkNirvana Foundation — no pay-to-rank. Read the disclosure →
A tight universe of mega-plans re-bids only every few years, and public 5500 data is too noisy to tell real plan distress from an accounting artifact — a spin-off, a netting change, a reporting shift. Non-billable underwriting hours get spent on plans with no intent to switch.
Most raw "signals" are reporting artifacts, not distress. An asset drop can be a spin-off, not flight.
Large plans formally re-bid infrequently — you have to catch them in the window when they're actually in motion.
Commodity 5500 tools surface generic red-flag lists with no materiality gate, and leave the analyst to interpret charts.
Two indicators frame every plan — one predictive, one present-state — each computed uniformly from public filing data and cited to the underlying Form 5500 line.
Who is in motion and winnable this cycle — a three-year trajectory across 2022–2024, cleansed of reporting artifacts. The predictive lens.
Current cost and compliance pressure versus size peers — the standing case for a conversation. The present-state lens.
The differentiator versus commodity 5500 tools: it isolates accounting artifacts from real distress, gates flags for materiality, surfaces the incumbent and its tenure, and delivers a plain-English, line-cited pre-RFP playbook where why it's moving and how to win it tell one story.
Isolates spin-offs, netting, and reporting-basis changes from genuine plan distress, so a trajectory reads true.
Every threshold is calibrated to where a plan sits in its size-peer distribution — not an arbitrary cutoff.
Compliance flags are gated for materiality, cutting the administrative noise that clutters raw red-flag lists.
Provider identity and tenure, plus a pre-RFP playbook whose counter-measure is built from the same signals that drive switch-readiness.
Each driver is drawn from a public Form 5500 line and gated for materiality before it counts.
Transparent pricing. The server is the cashier — every figure and price is fixed by the platform, never negotiated on the record for a single unlock.
One real plan's full record — figures with provenance chips, drivers, three-year trajectory — plus its pre-RFP playbook. Best when you already have a target.
The full sortable, filterable ranked switch-readiness list — the targeting engine — plus unlimited firm unlocks and playbooks. Talk to us.
The same switch-readiness data serves providers and consultants alike — one dataset, applied uniformly.
Institutional sales, RFP & pricing teams.
Placing target-date, stable-value, and CIT arrays.
Group-annuity and stable-value competition.
Plan-consulting and advisory practices.
A subscription analytics product that ranks single-employer 401(k) plans over $100M by a multi-year switch-readiness signal, built entirely from public Form 5500 filings, with every figure cited to a filing line. It is operated by ThinkNirvana LLC.
Exclusively from public U.S. Department of Labor Form 5500 filings. Plan Vector has no access to any data entered into the free Fiduciary Shield tool published by ThinkNirvana Foundation.
No. Rankings and scores are produced algorithmically and applied uniformly to every plan. No subscriber can pay to change its own score, alter a competitor's, suppress a plan, or influence rankings.
A per-firm unlock is $2,495 during the launch promo (through August 9, 2026), then $5,000. The annual platform subscription is $36,000/year, with 10% off a 2-year term and 20% off a 3-year term.
Verify your work email to explore the universe and see the synthetic worked example — then unlock a specific plan for its full record + pre-RFP playbook. For the full ranked list, talk to us.