Office address: 711 High St., Des Moines, IA 50392
Website: principal.com
Year established: 1879
Company type: financial services
Employees: 20,000+
Expertise: retirement planning, asset management, life insurance, annuities, employee benefits, wealth management, institutional investing, real estate investments, defined contribution plans, individual retirement accounts
Parent company: N/A
Key people: Deanna Strable (CEO); Kamal Bhatia (CEO, Principal Asset Management); Joel Pitz (CFO); Vivek Agrawal, Kenneth McCullum, and Bethany Wood (EVPs); Lisa Coulson (SVP)
Financing status: corporation
Principal Financial Group (PFG) is a Des Moines-based global investment management and insurance company. The firm provides retirement plans, annuities, insurance, and asset management to individuals and businesses. Principal manages $712 billion in assets as of 2025 and employs nearly 20,000 people across 27 countries and territories.
Principal grew out of The Bankers Life Association, which Edward Temple founded in 1879 in Des Moines with just $750. Fellow banker Simon Casady put in the same amount to offer affordable life insurance for bankers and their employees. Temple was so confident in the idea that he bought the first $2,000 membership certificate himself.
The firm ran without any paid staff for its first three years. John A. Tibbs joined in 1882 as the first employee and handled daily operations from there. Bankers Life grew fast and was writing farm loans across 21 states by 1885. Temple died in 1909 but left behind a company with $400 million in active policies.
Bankers Life became one of the first insurers to cover women in 1912. It pioneered direct mail marketing in 1927 and brought in $3 million in new sales that year alone.
The company moved to 711 High Street in 1940, a building that Architectural Record named the Building of the Decade. By 1968 it was sponsoring The Today Show with hosts Barbara Walters and Hugh Downs.
The company rolled out its first 401(k) products in 1984 and rebranded as Principal Financial Group the following year. Its 44-story tower at 801 Grand opened in 1990 as the tallest building between Denver and Chicago. Principal went public in 2001, with shares opening at $20.50.
PFG acquired Wells Fargo's institutional retirement and trust business for $1.2 billion in 2019. The company relaunched Principal Global Investors as Principal Asset Management in 2022 to better reflect its global reach.
The firm also agreed to buy the employee stock-option plan business from Ascensus in 2024. In 2025, Deanna Strable became Principal Financial Group's leader after joining the company in 1990.
PFG provides retirement, annuity, and IRA products built for individuals and employers. Its offerings range from workplace savings plans to guaranteed income solutions:
Principal Asset Management, the firm's investment management arm, also offers mutual funds, ETFs, and separately managed accounts. The company provides investment strategies in equities, fixed income, real estate, and infrastructure.
Principal Financial Group states its culture is built on trust and a long history of emphasizing flexibility. The company also promotes these core values:
To support this, PFG tailors work arrangements to fit individual needs and help staff balance life and work. Employee benefits include:
Principal Financial Group also promotes inclusion through a work environment based on integrity, respect, and community. Its employee resource groups (ERGs) provide social and cultural learning plus professional growth for staff worldwide.
Deanna D. Strable serves as chair, president, and CEO of PFG and sits on its board of directors. Strable started at Principal Financial Group in 1990 as an actuarial assistant and worked her way up to her current role. She holds a bachelor's degree from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.
Principal Financial Group's leadership team includes the following key executives:
These leaders focus on helping customers plan, protect, invest, and retire. They also commit to supporting communities and building an inclusive workforce.
Principal Asset Management, the company's investment solutions business, created a new leadership role to sharpen its focus on retirement savings. The firm hired Brant Wong from JPMorgan in 2025 to oversee nearly $320 billion in retirement assets. With this move, Principal Financial Group looks to better serve retirement plan sponsors and their participants.
On the investor side, a Hearts & Wallets report found that PFG has the widest mix of risk attitudes among its clients. About one in four feel very comfortable with market volatility while one in five feels very uncomfortable. This range helps Principal Financial Group serve diverse investors as more Americans grow confident about their finances.
RobustWealth, which includes digital advice, goal-based investment tools and client onboarding, will stop servicing advisers in September.
After a six-day bench trial in U.S. District Court in the Southern District of Iowa Central Division, a judge ruled in favor of Principal on all counts. Salesforce also won a case, while a new one was filed against Kimberly-Clark, and another was settled by John Hancock.
Selling away charges are at the center of three large customer complaints against ex-broker John Krohn. In 2018, Finra reached a settlement with Krohn in which he was suspended from the industry for three months and paid a fine of $10,000.
The activist investor reportedly is pushing Principal to focus more on its wealth management operations and less on the life insurance business.
Plan sponsors were slow to change record keepers during the second quarter and some even waived fees, according to Principal Financial Group
The fixed annuity marketplace will be open to the association's 38 million members
Advisers like provisions for increasing workplace retirement plans, extending RMD age, but question limits on inherited IRAs
From competitive pricing cuts that defy logic to the increasing cost of cybersecurity and other expenses, the pressure is on 401(k) record keepers to adapt or die.
Many sponsors of the popular 401(k) funds don't disclose their use of underlying in-house investments.
ASTRO and other tools are automating the process of direct indexing and making it accessible to advisers who serve smaller accounts.
American Equity, American Financial Group, Lincoln National and Principal say lower interest rates are leading to reduced annuity payouts and, in some cases, lower sales.
Retiring during the longest-running bull market in history can be scary, as some begin to wonder when the good times will end.
Advisers are making decisions about clients' portfolios by using the same characteristics that govern factor-based ETFs.
Principal paid less than other firms that have acquired large retirement businesses in the past decade and a half, according to an InvestmentNews analysis.
Transaction is part of Wells' effort to streamline its operations in the wake of scandals.
