The Federal Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) requires entities or sponsors that offer post-employment benefit plans to disclose audited financial information to plan beneficiaries. ERISA establishes the minimum standards for employment benefit plans, including pensions, 401(k) accounts and health plans. Consequently, the IRS requires these plans to submit Form 5500 annually, along with annual reports for employee benefit plans. There were 89,126 post-employment benefit plans audited by 4,294 firms ending in calendar year 2020.

In this article, Audit Analytics further examines the audit firm market shares of ERISA benefit plans broken down by single employer, multiemployer and direct filing entity plan types.