Who Owns Principal?

The brand traces to July 1, 1879, when Des Moines banker Edward Temple and fellow bankers including Simon Casady and Phineas Casady founded The Bankers Life Association. The original purpose was narrow: sell inexpensive life insurance to bankers and their employees in a frontier state where coverage was costly and unreliable. Each founder put in $750, and the association operated with no paid staff at first.

The association converted to a mutual legal reserve company in 1911 as Bankers Life Company, owned by its policyholders rather than shareholders. Through the mid-twentieth century it grew into a national life insurer, expanded into group benefits, and planted the seed of its later retirement business by writing pension products for employers. Its 711 High Street headquarters and later the 45-story 801 Grand tower made it the anchor of the Des Moines skyline.

The Principal name appeared in 1985 as the company rebranded to reflect a business that had moved well beyond life insurance. A mutual holding company reorganization in the 1990s set up the defining event in its corporate history: demutualization. In October 2001 the company converted from policyholder ownership to stock ownership and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in what was then one of the largest US insurance IPOs. The listing later moved to Nasdaq.

Post-IPO, the company expanded internationally and built its asset management arm. Principal Global Investors grew into a global institutional manager, and the company assembled pension operations across Latin America and Asia. A series of portfolio decisions narrowed the focus: it exited US retail banking in 2018, sold its retail fixed annuity business to Talcott Resolution in a transaction completed in 2022, and consolidated its investment units under a single Principal Asset Management identity.

CEO Dan Houston handed leadership to longtime finance chief Deanna Strable-Soethout in January 2025. Under her tenure the company reported full-year 2025 GAAP revenue of $15.6 billion, net income of approximately $1.2 billion, and non-GAAP operating earnings of $1.9 billion, with assets under management reaching $781 billion and the international pension book growing 24 percent to $154 billion.