The "Newsroom" page on BrightScope's Web site documents the media campaign catapulting the company to national prominence. It started at the beginning of January 2009 with coverage by 401(k) trade media like Employee Benefit Adviser and Boston ERISA & Insurance Litigation Blog. By the end of that month, however, U.S. News & World Report had written an item. "Now there's a place where you can dish all the juicy financial details online," said U.S. News reporter Emily Brandon. "BrightScope Inc., an independent data analysis firm, launched the nation's first online 401k rating system today."

In February came a CNNMoney.com story about BrightScope, then a mention of their data in BusinessWeek in March and a post about the company in a July Wall Street Journal blog. Over the next year, USA Today, SmartMoney, Forbes and The New York Times covered the company. Now, the Alfred brothers tell their story or provide 401(k) data to national media outlets several times a week.

Of course, the media are calling for good reason: BrightScope provides data and analysis previously unavailable on 401(k)s.

"The first thing you can do when you come to our Web site is look up a company in the search bar at the top to get what we call its BrightScope Rating Page," says Ryan. Nifty programming in the search bar auto-fills the full name of a company as you begin to type.

"This is where you're going to get an overall review of the quality of a plan based on a ratings system that we've developed," he adds. "It consists of the overall measure of quality, which we call the BrightScope Rating, which is a 1-100 rating. It's designed to measure the ability of this plan to get its participants to retirement, and, obviously, higher scores here are better."

I took a look at a BrightScope Rating Page for a company plan that could be an attractive client for our readers: a $12.4 million plan with 130 employees of a medical group specializing in radiology. The BrightScope Rating measures the ability of a plan to get its average 401(k) participant to retirement and is calculated by running thousands of simulations on the plan.

To compare 401(k) plans, BrightScope constructs a unique peer group for every single plan. To make that plan's design and performance comparisons fair and valuable, BrightScope's peer group algorithm takes into account the number of participants in a plan, the level of assets and the industry of the plan sponsor. In the company plan that I reviewed, the BrightScope peer rankings show that although the plan has a rating six points higher than the average rating of 69 for plans in its peer group, its rating of 75 is eight points below the best plan in its peer group. BrightScope estimates the average participant in this plan will have to work seven years longer than a counterpart participating in the top-ranked plan in the peer group and will lose out on $56,200 of lost retirement savings relative to the other plan's average participant.

The lower half of a BrightScope Rating Page contains additional information of use to all 401(k) stakeholders and those seeking to sell advice to them. One intriguing data item is the "Other Companies In Peer Group" list. Armed with the names of those companies, an advisor could construct proposals that are targeted to specific industries and develop a niche-such as doctors or construction companies.

Until now, only the plan sponsors had enough data to perform proper analysis on a plan. In fact, Ryan says plan participants often-and sponsors sometimes-do not have data about their plan's fees. For instance, there was nothing on the Form 5500 showing what mutual funds a plan used. Since that is the largest component of plan expenses, not knowing this basic information made comparative analysis and benchmarking of plans impossible. New DOL regulations are changing that, along with BrightScope's intelligent use of the data coming available.

BrightScope says its database now consists of 50,000 plans, covering 90% of all the assets in corporate plans. Large plans with $500 million or more are very efficient compared with small plans. Total plan costs vary widely among small plans with $5 million or even $25 million in assets. Many small plans are paying expenses of more than 3%, 4% or even 5%. Those plans represent rich targets for advisors.