Cardinal Health 401(k) Savings Plan: Principal
Cardinal Health, Inc. · Dublin, OH · EIN 310958666 · Plan 055 · Form 5500 for plan year 2024
Principal is the recordkeeper named on this filing, the company that keeps the account records for this plan. Where to log in, and who to call.
What Cardinal Health put into the plan, per active participant
$2,534
Cardinal Health, Inc. put $2,534 into this plan for each of its 31,015 active participants in plan year 2024. That is the whole employer side, matching money, profit sharing, non-elective and safe-harbor contributions and reallocated forfeitures together, because the Form 5500 reports them on one line, so it is not the match rate.
Cardinal Health put in less per active participant than 51% of plans with 5,000+ participants in wholesale trade. The middle plan in that group of 100 reported $2,549. Wholesale trade comes from business code 424210, which Cardinal Health, Inc. entered on its own Form 5500. Sponsors pick that code themselves, so a code that does not describe what the employer does ranks the plan against the wrong companies.
What this figure cannot separate: how much Cardinal Health pays, and how much it puts in
This is dollars, not a rate. A Form 5500 carries no payroll, so the figure reflects both how much the employer puts in and how much the employer pays: two plans running the same formula report different amounts when one pays better. Crossing the peer group with industry holds most of that difference still, and none of it disappears.
This is one plan year, not an average. A true-up, a plan merger or a one-off contribution moves a single year on its own.
Source: Form 5500 filing for the plan year ended December 31, 2024, received by the DOL July 30, 2025 · Read the filing (PDF) ↗
The $2,534 above is the Form 5500 figure for plan year 2024, and it counts every employer dollar on one line. Cardinal Health, Inc. also files a Form 11-K, which states the match formula on its own for plan year 2025: the section below reads $1,980 a year at a $49,500 salary, and the same filing states employer contributions made outside the match. That second figure is what the formula pays one worker on that salary, and not an amount either filing reports. The two figures cover different plan years and measure different things, so neither one is the other one corrected.
What the plan cost, per participant
$47.11
The plan paid $47.11 per participant in plan-paid administrative expenses in plan year 2024, cheaper than 58% of plans with 5,000+ participants. The middle plan of that size paid $54.84.
Why a plan this big pays less per person before anything else
Bigger plans pay less per head by construction, because the same negotiated bill divides across more people. That is why this ranking sits inside the plan's own size cohort and is never taken across all plans.
Schedule H reports only what came out of plan assets. Fees the sponsor pays directly, and fees taken inside fund expense ratios, never appear here, so this is a floor and not the all-in cost.
401(k) Monitor Score
51 out of 100
Where this plan stands against plans of its size and industry on two amounts its Form 5500 reports: employer money in per active person, and plan-paid cost per person. It reads no match formula, no vesting schedule and no fund lineup, because a Form 5500 states none of them.
- What the employer put in, per active participant: $2,534. Lower than 51% of plans with 5,000+ participants in wholesale trade.
- What the plan cost, per participant: $47.11. Cheaper than 58% of plans with 5,000+ participants.
On this page: who holds your account · the match and vesting terms · what to check next · every figure on the filing · late deposits · fees itemised · the plans this one is ranked against · service providers
Who holds your account
Schedule C of this filing reports Principal, filed as “PRINCIPAL LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY”. That is the company paid to keep the account records: what is in an account, what went into it, and usually the site a participant signs in to. The trustee that holds the plan’s assets can be a different company, and this filing does not name it.
5,239 plans on file name Principal as their recordkeeper, at a median of $170.05 per participant.
Participants log in at Principal ↗. 401(k) Monitor is not affiliated with Principal or with any other recordkeeper, and takes nothing for this link. It is here because that is where the account is.
| Recordkeeper | Principal |
|---|---|
| Recordkeeper EINThe provider's own employer identification number, as the filing states it. | 420127290 |
| Plan sponsor telephoneThe number Cardinal Health, Inc. filed on the Form 5500. It reaches the employer, not the recordkeeper. | (614) 757-5000 |
The match and vesting terms, from a Form 11-K
The match formula and the vesting schedule are stated in a Form 11-K, which is filed only by employers whose plan holds company stock. A Form 5500 reports neither.
What Cardinal Health puts in
$1,980
a year, at a $49,500 salary.
The match paragraph, word for word
“The Company match is 200% of each participant’s compensation deferral contributions that do not exceed 1% of the participant’s compensation, and 50% of each participant’s compensation deferral contributions that exceed 1% of the participant’s compensation but that do not exceed 5% of the participant’s compensation. Matching contributions are allocated on an aggregate basis to both pre-tax and Roth elective contributions, subject to the matching limitations in the preceding sentences.”
What you contribute to collect all of it
Contribute at least 5% of your pay to collect the full match.
That is $2,475 a year at a $49,500 salary, and it scales with your own.
Vesting score
100 out of 100
How fast the employer’s money becomes yours. Higher than 48% of the 369 schedules we have scored.
It measures vesting speed and nothing else. It says nothing about the size of the match, what the plan charges, or the funds inside it.
Share of the employer's money that is the worker's at hire and at each of the first 6 anniversaries: 100%, 100%, 100%, 100%, 100%, 100%, 100%. The score is the average of those 7 readings.
Vesting, word for word
“Participants are 100% vested immediately in their elective deferral, rollover, and Company matching contributions, plus actual earnings thereon. A participant is 100% vested in the Company’s discretionary employer and discretionary special contributions after three years of vesting service, or if the participant dies, becomes totally disabled, or reaches retirement age, as defined by the Plan document, while employed by the Company. The Plan provides for the partial vesting of the Company contributions to non-highly compensated participants with more than one year, but less than three years, of vesting service, who were terminated as part of a designated reduction in workforce, as defined in the Plan document.”
The wait before the match starts and the year-end true-up appear above when the filing states them. Neither is part of the score, and a filing that is silent on one of them is not a plan without it.
What the plan costs, against plans of its size
42nd percentile
$47.11 per participant in plan-paid administrative cost, cheaper than 58% of plans with 5,000+ participants.
The match, vesting and eligibility terms above are read from the Form 11-K filed by Cardinal Health, Inc., whose page states the full formula, the vesting schedule and the sentence behind each one.
Matched to this employer by sponsor name, not by an identifier stated in the filing. That Form 11-K covers Cardinal Health 401(k) Savings Plan.
What to check next
Collecting the whole match
Cardinal Health’s Form 11-K pays the whole match at 5% of pay, which is $1,980 a year at a $49,500 salary and scales with your own. Your payslip and your Principal ↗ account both show the rate you set. A rate below 5% collects less than the whole match.
That Form 11-K covers plan year 2025. The plan’s Summary Plan Description states the terms in force, and the plan administrator must provide it to participants on request.
Your own numbers are not on this page
Every figure here is the whole plan for plan year 2024, taken from one filing and divided by headcounts. Your own contribution rate, your balance and the fees taken from your account are on your recordkeeper’s site, which this filing names as Principal ↗. What you may put in during a year is set by the IRS and not by the plan: this year’s limits ↗.
Key figures
| Total plan assets, end of year | $4,764,536,322 |
|---|---|
| Net assets | $4,764,316,473 |
| Participants, beginning of year | 45,111 |
| Of which active | 31,015 |
| Plan type | Single employer |
| Size cohortThe peer group we rank fees against. | 5,000+ participants |
| Automatic enrollmentForm 5500 line 8a carries a code for automatic enrollment, 2S, and this filing does not tick it. Across this dataset 25,364 plans do. | Not ticked on this filing |
| How the filing meets the 401(k) nondiscrimination rules, plan year 2024Schedule R part VII, as ticked. The rule compares what the higher-paid put in with what everyone else puts in, and the boxes say which method the plan used for this year. This filing ticks more than one, so no single one describes the plan. | Design-based safe harbor, Current year ADP test |
| Employer share of the money that went in, plan year 2024The rest came from employees, who put in $165,082,090. The share falls when employees save more, so a plan whose staff contribute heavily reads lower here through no act of the employer. It is printed as a fact and it is not part of the score. | 32% |
Late deposits of employee contributions
Schedule H line 4a of this filing is answered no: it reports no money withheld from participants’ pay that reached the plan later than the law allows, for plan year 2024.
The line is answered by the employer about its own plan and nobody checks it here, so a no is an answer rather than a clean bill of health. 13,904 of the 55,904 plans that answered this line answered yes.
Plan-paid administrative expenses
The plan paid $2,125,076 in administrative expenses in plan year 2024, across 45,111 participants: $47.11 per participant.
| Contract administrator fees | $444,257 |
|---|---|
| Professional fees | not reported in filing |
| Investment management fees | $150,000 |
| Other administrative fees | $123,435 |
These are plan-paid expenses from Schedule H only. Fees the sponsor pays directly, and fees embedded in fund expense ratios, never appear here. This figure is a floor, not the all-in cost, and a low number is not “free”.
The plans this one is ranked against
Fees on this page are ranked against the 5,000+ participant cohort, where the median plan pays $54.84 per participant. The sponsor files from Ohio, one of 2,465 plans on file there, at a median of $134.01 per participant. Its business code places the plan in wholesale trade, one of 3,490 on file, which run to a median of $149.72.
Plans of a similar size in Ohio
| Plan | Participants | Cost per participant |
|---|---|---|
| Nestle 401(k) Savings PlanNestle USA, Inc. Savings Plan Administration | 49,794 | $6.04 |
| First Student, Inc. Retirement Savings PlanFirstgroup America, Inc. | 46,872 | $19.97 |
| Nationwide Savings PlanNationwide Mutual Insurance Company | 42,461 | $47.14 |
| The Procter & Gamble Savings PlanThe Procter & Gamble Company | 42,264 | $72.35 |
Service providers (Schedule C)
| Provider | Service codes | Direct comp. ($) | Indirect comp. ($) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Principal Life Insurance Company | 50, 64, 15 | 964,816 | 0 |
| Principal Life Insurance Company | 65, 50, 62, 37, 13 | 444,257 | 0 |
| Groom Law Group, Chartered | 50, 29 | 273,564 | not reported |
| Ernst & Young LLP | 50, 10 | 169,004 | not reported |
| Nepc, LLC | 50, 28, 27 | 150,000 | not reported |
| Ary Roepcke Mulchaey, P.C. | 50, 10 | 122,010 | not reported |
Useful links
- Find a 401(k) you left at an old job ↗
The DOL's Retirement Savings Lost & Found. Free and official.
- Read this plan's Form 5500 as filed (PDF) ↗
The document every figure above was read from, served by the DOL. Acknowledgement ID 20250730154837NAL0010840498001.
Source
Everything this page reports about the plan itself was read from one document: the Form 5500 annual return that Cardinal Health, Inc. filed with the US Department of Labor for the plan year ended December 31, 2024. Nothing here is estimated, modelled or supplied by the employer to this site.
Where the page compares this plan with others, the comparison is computed from the same Form 5500 release across the peer group each figure names. The filing is below, and the identifiers under it find it again without this page.
Read the filing as submitted (PDF, dol.gov) ↗
| Document | Form 5500 annual return for plan year 2024 |
|---|---|
| Filed with | US Department of Labor, EBSA (through EFAST2) |
| Filed byAs spelled on the filing | CARDINAL HEALTH, INC. |
| Employer EIN | 310958666 |
| Plan number | 055 |
| Filing ACK_ID | 20250730154837NAL0010840498001 |
| Received by the DOL | July 30, 2025 |
| Bulk dataset | DOL EFAST2 Form 5500 bulk data (FOIA) |
| Dataset last refreshed | July 28, 2026 |
Bulk dataset at askebsa.dol.gov ↗ · Search EFAST2 by EIN and plan number ↗
401(k) Monitor is not affiliated with Cardinal Health, Inc., with the Department of Labor or with this plan’s recordkeeper, and publishes this page without their involvement. It republishes a public filing and says where it came from.
Filings lag by design: a plan can file up to 9½ months after its year ends, so this is the newest data on file. Why filings lag
Cite this page
401(k) Monitor, "Cardinal Health 401(k) Savings Plan: Form 5500 facts", from DOL EFAST2 filing 20250730154837NAL0010840498001, plan year ended December 31, 2024. 401(k) Monitor Score 51 out of 100 (exact value 51.29).
