Form 5500 ranking
Retirement Plans with the Biggest Asset Growth
The 50 plans that added the most in total assets year-over-year, comparing consecutive DOL Form 5500 filings for the same plan. According to the U.S. Department of Labor's 2024 Form 5500 filings.
Data updated 2026-07-24
- $12.4B
- #1 Plan
- 50
- Ranked
- $199.1B
- Combined asset growth
Microsoft Corporation Savings Plus 401(k) Plan leads at $12.4B
According to the U.S. Department of Labor's 2024 Form 5500 filings, this ranking covers the top 50 plans by asset growth. Microsoft Corporation Savings Plus 401(k) Plan leads at $12.4B; the full list totals $199.1B combined.
- $199.1B combined across 50
- 50 plans ranked
The ranking in one line
Microsoft Corporation Savings Plus 401(k) Plan leads with $12.4B in asset growth; the 50 plans ranked here added $199.1B in combined asset growth.
- $12.4B
- #1 - Microsoft Corporation Savi…
- 50
- plans ranked
- $199.1B
- combined asset growth
What This Ranking Tells Us
This ranking compares each plan's two most recent Form 5500 filings and ranks the largest dollar increase in total end-of-year assets. Growth reflects a mix of factors: market performance on existing holdings, new employee and employer contributions, workforce growth, and, for pensions, funding changes. A plan can show large asset growth even with flat participant counts if markets performed well or contribution rates increased; conversely, a plan can add participants without asset growth keeping pace. This is not a performance or quality ranking, plans with large baseline assets naturally show larger dollar moves than small plans even at similar percentage growth. A $1 million prior-year asset floor keeps the list to plans large enough that a dollar comparison is meaningful.
How to Read the Retirement Plans with the Biggest Asset Growth Ranking
This page ranks 50 plan records by asset growth, from Microsoft Corporation Savings Plus 401(k) Plan at the top ($12.4B) through 401(k) Savings Plan at #50 ($2.0B). The underlying dataset is drawn from the Department of Labor, Form 5500 Annual Return/Report (two most recent plan years) for the 2024 plan year. Each ranked entry links to a detail page with the full set of Form 5500 fields, plan type, sponsor EIN, state, participants, net assets, net income, and prior-year history where available.
This ranking compares each plan's two most recent Form 5500 filings and ranks the largest dollar increase in total end-of-year assets. Growth reflects a mix of factors: market performance on existing holdings, new employee and employer contributions, workforce growth, and, for pensions, funding changes. A plan can show large asset growth even with flat participant counts if markets performed well or contribution rates increased; conversely, a plan can add participants without asset growth keeping pace. This is not a performance or quality ranking, plans with large baseline assets naturally show larger dollar moves than small plans even at similar percentage growth. A $1 million prior-year asset floor keeps the list to plans large enough that a dollar comparison is meaningful.
Rankings based on a single metric can be misleading in isolation - "Asset Growth" captures one dimension of a plan's profile and does not measure participant outcomes, fees, investment options, or funding health. Year-to-year movement in this ranking reflects market performance, workforce changes, plan mergers, and filing timing as much as plan quality. This page is informational only, summarizing public DOL disclosures for research and educational purposes, and is not retirement, tax, legal, or financial advice. Before relying on any ranking to evaluate an employer's plan or make retirement decisions, verify the underlying filing on EFAST2 and consult a qualified professional.
Source: Department of Labor, Form 5500 Annual Return/Report (two most recent plan years).
Frequently Asked Questions
Does asset growth mean the plan is being managed well?
Not necessarily. Most of a plan's year-over-year asset change comes from market returns on existing holdings and new contributions, not investment selection skill. A plan invested heavily in equities during a strong market year will show large growth regardless of how it is administered. Compare growth alongside participant count and net income for a fuller picture.
Why do large plans dominate the dollar-growth ranking?
A plan with $10 billion in assets only needs 5% growth to add $500 million, while a $10 million plan needs 50x that growth rate to add the same dollar amount. This ranking intentionally measures absolute dollar growth, not percentage growth, because a fixed percentage floor would let very small plans dominate on noise. Percentage change is shown on each plan's own detail page alongside the dollar figures.
What could cause a plan to show asset growth even after losing participants?
Investment returns on the existing asset base, employer contributions tied to prior commitments (especially for defined-benefit pensions), and mergers where another plan's assets are absorbed can all grow total assets independent of participant count. Form 5500 does not separately break out how much of a change came from each factor.
Nearby Rankings
Other leaderboards cut from the same Form 5500 dataset, ranked by different metrics.
What to do with this ranking
Ways to act on this ranking's numbers.
- Microsoft Corporation Savings Plus 401(k) Plan leads this ranking at $12.4B, see its full Form 5500 profile. View plan profile
- Compare this ranking side-by-side against 3 other Form 5500 leaderboards. Compare rankings
- A single-metric ranking like this one doesn't measure fees, funding health, or participant outcomes, read how these rankings are built before drawing conclusions. Read the methodology
- Browse the full Form 5500 plan database to look up any individual plan by name, sponsor, or state. Browse all plans
Source: Department of Labor, Form 5500 Annual Return/Report (two most recent plan years). Rankings rebuilt from the publicly released 2024 plan-year file.
Source: DOL EFAST2 filing system (efast.dol.gov) - original Form 5500 filings retrievable by plan sponsor EIN or plan name.
Read our methodology - how this data is sourced, computed, and verified.
How Plan Rankings Are Constructed
Ranking retirement plans is more subtle than ranking, say, restaurants or stocks. A "largest" plan is unambiguous when measured by participant count or asset total, both are reported in Form 5500 and audited by an independent accountant once a plan crosses the 100-participant threshold. But a "best" plan is contextual: the right benchmark for a multi-employer pension fund is different from the right benchmark for a single-employer 401(k), and both are different from the benchmark for an ESOP. PlainRetire's ranking pages stick to clearly defined, source-derived metrics, participant counts, plan assets, net contribution, employer contribution as a share of pay, year-over-year asset growth, and surface each metric on its own page so readers can decide which framing is relevant for their question.
Each ranking includes the underlying source (Form 5500 schedule and line item), the plan-year vintage, and a footnote when an aggregate excludes plans with incomplete or amended filings. Where a plan has filed multiple amendments, a sometimes-routine but sometimes-meaningful signal, the ranking uses the most recent accepted filing and notes the amendment count on the plan detail page. This approach lets readers see who is at the top of a particular ladder without conflating different scales of "size" or "growth."
Methodology and Limitations
Rankings are computed against the most recent annual dataset released by the Department of Labor. New plans, terminations, and significant amendments will not appear until the next annual release, which has roughly a seven-month publication lag from plan year end. Plans that file Form 5500-EZ (single-participant plans) are not included in the public datasets and therefore do not appear in PlainRetire rankings. International plans, government plans, and church plans (which are exempt from Title I of ERISA) are similarly outside the dataset and outside these rankings. When evaluating a ranking, consider the universe being compared: a national ranking of 401(k) sponsors will be dominated by Fortune 500 employers, while a state-level ranking will surface regionally significant plans that don't appear in the national list.
Asset and participant counts are reported by the plan sponsor and certified by an auditor for plans above 100 participants. Smaller plans rely on plan-sponsor attestation. Both are subject to standard data-quality caveats: corrections appear as amended filings in subsequent years, and PlainRetire reflects amendments as soon as DOL releases updated datasets.
Every figure on PlainRetire is rendered directly from the Department of Labor's Form 5500 annual return filings, no number is typed in by an editor. See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error. Data current as of 2026-07-24.