According to the announcement, the Plan Management Dashboard benchmarks a plan’s BrightScope Rating and all six component Ratings against a group of similar companies, enables viewing and verification of the underlying data and calculations, and provides for direct plan to plan comparisons.  The firm says that the Plan Management Dashboard uses “real data, from real plans – not survey data or other less precise methods”.

In an effort to deliver transparency BrightScope releases Form 5500 data on its public disclosure Web site to highlight pension plans’ required annual reports that document their financial condition, investments and operations.  Additionally, the Form 5500 data has been integrated into BrightScope’s primary site navigation bar.  

The firm notes that “with the dashboard, those directly responsible for managing 401k plans also see a myriad of other data that fills in what doesn’t exist on the Form 5500 – including fees, investment information and more.”

BrightScope obtains its data directly, either from plan sponsors, or from publicly available sources ranging from The United States Department of Labor (DOL) to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Additionally, BrightScope receives investment data from Xignite.

BrightScope says it has rated 4,000 401k plans, spanning 20 million workers and $1.2 trillion in assets. The BrightScope Rating for small plans with assets of $50,000 to large plans with more than $30 billion can be found at www.BrightScope.com. The company says it is working to rate more than 30,000 plans by the end of 2009.