Principal Financial Group (PFG)
Administers retirement plans, manages investments, and insures employer benefits.
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Principal runs the retirement plan where people at small and mid-sized American companies save, and sells the dental, disability and life cover that sits beside it. It also manages money — for its own savers, for big institutions, and for pension savers in Latin America. Lately it has been selling off small overseas corners and buying deeper into workplace benefits, the part that has been underwriting best.
Item facts: FY2025 · year ended Dec 31, 2025, from filings, earnings calls and company pages.
Judgment weights, not filed revenue
The band summarizes business focus and direction. ~ marks estimates.
9 in detail · 12 more below
Workplace Savings and Retirement Solutions
The retirement-plan engine room for smaller employers — roughly a sixth of revenue, earned on balances Principal both administers and often invests. Watch money rolling in from other plans, up sharply in 2026, and the scale race against Fidelity and Empower.
Competes with Workplace Investing (Fidelity) · Empower Retirement (Empower) · Wealth Solutions (Voya Financial)
In plain English
Think of the retirement plan at a mid-sized employer. Somebody has to track every paycheck deduction, every employer match and every worker's balance, and send out the statements. Principal is that somebody, for employers weighted towards the small and mid-sized end.
It gets paid twice on the same pile of money: a fee for doing the plumbing, and a second fee when savers leave their balances in Principal's own funds. So it grows when payrolls grow, when markets rise, and when a worker moves an old account in rather than out — money transferred in from other plans was up about thirty percent in the middle of 2026.
Individual Variable Annuities and RILAs
Market-linked savings contracts sold through the retirement business, about six percent of revenue. Fees ride on account values, so the line moves with markets; the newer piece is funds inside workplace plans meant to pay a saver income for life.
Competes with Structured Capital Strategies (Equitable) · Amplify annuities (Athene)
In plain English
A savings contract sold alongside the retirement plans: you hand over a lump sum, and what it earns is tied to markets — either directly, or linked to a market index within limits written into the contract.
Principal charges fees on the balance for as long as it sits there, so this line rises and falls with markets rather than with anything the company does in a given year. It has also begun putting funds inside workplace plans designed to turn a saver's balance into steady income later in life. The competition is partly other insurers, partly the simplest option of all — moving the money to an ordinary retirement account somewhere else.
Specialty Benefits Insurance
Dental, vision, disability and group life for smaller employers — the largest single revenue line at roughly a fifth, and the most dependable profit: the 2025 claims ratio was the best in company history. Watch hiring levels and claims.
Competes with Group disability and dental (Unum Group) · Group benefits (MetLife) · Group dental (Guardian Life)
In plain English
Dental cleanings, new glasses, and a paycheck that keeps arriving when someone is off sick for months. This is the everyday cover an employer buys for its staff, usually through a benefits broker and often at the same moment it sets up the retirement plan.
Employers pay a monthly premium per worker, Principal pays the claims, and the gap is the profit. In 2025 the gap was the widest in company history, and the second quarter of 2026 ran wider still, with earnings up twenty-nine percent. That makes this the group's highest-quality profit — and the place it has chosen to spend fresh money.
Beam Benefits
A digital small-business benefits carrier bought and closed in September 2026, writing about $175M of premium — around one percent of Principal's revenue. Small today; management expects it to lift benefits growth to the top of its range in 2027.
Competes with Benefits marketplace (Gusto) · Benefits marketplace (Justworks) · Small-business dental plans (Guardian Life)
In plain English
Bought in July 2026 and closed that September: an employee-benefits company built the way a software company would build one. Small employers buy dental, vision and add-on cover through its website, with quoting and pricing run by software. More than twenty-five thousand small employers came with the deal.
It was writing roughly one hundred seventy-five million dollars of premium a year — small beside Principal's own benefits book. The point is what each does for the other: Beam's members move onto the dentist network Principal owns instead of one Beam rented, and Beam's quick online quoting gets pointed at Principal's existing small-business customers.
Investment Management
The fee engine: roughly an eighth of revenue for running money in funds, separate accounts and private deals. Earnings rose five percent in 2025, but about $11B walked out of US stock-picking funds in one 2026 quarter.
Competes with Multi-asset fund platform (Franklin Templeton) · Retirement target-date funds (T. Rowe Price) · Index funds (Vanguard)
In plain English
The part that invests other people's money for a fee. Big institutions, retirement savers, everyday fund buyers and wealthy families hand money over to be run in shares, bonds, property and private deals, and Principal charges a small annual slice of whatever it is holding.
The slice is thin but the pile is huge, so the arithmetic cuts both ways: a rising market lifts revenue without anyone selling anything, and a falling one takes it back. Right now money is walking out of its US stock-picking funds — about eleven billion dollars in the second quarter of 2026 — towards cheap index products. Growth is coming instead from private-market deals and from funds that trade on an exchange like a share.
Principal Real Estate
The property arm nested inside the money-management business: roughly $107B of buildings, listed property shares and property loans, around sixth-largest globally. Fees follow property values, so the building cycle sets the pace.
Competes with PGIM Real Estate (PGIM) · Nuveen Real Estate (Nuveen)
In plain English
Buildings, and the loans against buildings. This arm buys property outright on behalf of clients, buys shares in listed property companies, and lends money to other owners as well — roughly a hundred billion dollars of property money in total.
It earns the way the rest of the money-management arm earns: an annual fee on what it holds, so the revenue follows what the buildings are worth. Among the world's large property managers it sits around sixth, behind PGIM Real Estate and Nuveen Real Estate — solid rather than dominant, in a market measured in trillions.
Pension Risk Transfer
Employers hand over one big cheque and Principal takes over paying their retirees — about $3B across 70 cases in 2025, large-case rather than giant. It swells quarterly revenue without much profit, and the market is in a slow patch.
Competes with Group annuity buyouts (Athene) · Group annuity buyouts (Prudential) · Large-case group annuities (Legal & General)
In plain English
Some employers still owe their retired staff a monthly pension for life and would rather not carry that promise any longer. They pay Principal one very large sum up front; Principal takes on the promise and pays those retirees from then on.
That payment counts as revenue all at once, which is why the retirement side's quarterly revenue lurches around while profits barely move. Principal wrote about three billion dollars of these deals across seventy cases in 2025 — an average size that puts it in the big-case tier rather than the giant one. The whole market shrank in 2025 and started 2026 slowly, so this is a lumpy business in a quiet spell.
International Pension
Retirement accounts in Chile, Mexico, Brazil and China, run with local bank partners. About five percent of revenue but the fattest margin in the group, on record savings of roughly $170B in mid-2026. Rules and currencies are the swing factors.
Competes with AFP Habitat pension funds (AFP Habitat) · Afore XXI Banorte retirement funds (Afore XXI Banorte) · Bank-sold retirement plans (Bradesco)
In plain English
In Chile, Mexico and Brazil a slice of a worker's pay goes into a private retirement account — in some countries because the law says so, in others because savers choose it. Somebody has to run those accounts. Principal is one of those somebodies, usually alongside a big local bank, and it works with China Construction Bank in China too.
It charges fees on the savings it manages, which hit a record of roughly one hundred seventy billion dollars in mid-2026. Small in revenue, outsized in profit: this carries the highest margin in the group. The risks are less about markets than about governments — Chile's pension rules above all — plus exchange rates, since the fees are earned in local money.
Life Insurance
Life cover sold to business owners, about eight percent of revenue. Steady premiums, modest profit, and an older book shrinking behind it. Reported growth turns negative in 2026 only because the sales arm moved elsewhere in the company.
Competes with Business-owner life insurance (MassMutual) · Business-owner life insurance (New York Life) · Individual life insurance (Lincoln Financial)
In plain English
Two owners of a small business each want the other's family paid out fairly if one of them dies; a firm wants cover on the one person it cannot replace. Principal writes those policies, mostly for people who are already its retirement or benefits customers.
Premiums arrive every month, claims go out unpredictably, and the gap is the profit — which is why one bad half-year of claims in 2025 pushed the margin below target before it recovered in 2026. An older book of policies is quietly running off in the background, part of its risk handed to reinsurers. Reported growth turns negative in 2026 for a filing reason, not a trading one: the sales arm was moved into another part of the company.
Workplace Savings and Retirement SolutionsThe retirement-plan engine room for smaller employers — roughly a sixth of revenue, earned on balances Principal both administers and often invests. Watch money rolling in from other plans, up sharply in 2026, and the scale race against Fidelity and Empower.The retirement-plan engine room for smaller employers — roughly a sixth of revenue, earned on balances Principal both administers and often invests. Watch money rolling in from other plans, up sharply in 2026, and the scale race against Fidelity and Empower.
In plain English
Think of the retirement plan at a mid-sized employer. Somebody has to track every paycheck deduction, every employer match and every worker's balance, and send out the statements. Principal is that somebody, for employers weighted towards the small and mid-sized end.
It gets paid twice on the same pile of money: a fee for doing the plumbing, and a second fee when savers leave their balances in Principal's own funds. So it grows when payrolls grow, when markets rise, and when a worker moves an old account in rather than out — money transferred in from other plans was up about thirty percent in the middle of 2026.
Competes with Workplace Investing (Fidelity) · Empower Retirement (Empower) · Wealth Solutions (Voya Financial)
Individual Variable Annuities and RILAsMarket-linked savings contracts sold through the retirement business, about six percent of revenue. Fees ride on account values, so the line moves with markets; the newer piece is funds inside workplace plans meant to pay a saver income for life.Market-linked savings contracts sold through the retirement business, about six percent of revenue. Fees ride on account values, so the line moves with markets; the newer piece is funds inside workplace plans meant to pay a saver income for life.
In plain English
A savings contract sold alongside the retirement plans: you hand over a lump sum, and what it earns is tied to markets — either directly, or linked to a market index within limits written into the contract.
Principal charges fees on the balance for as long as it sits there, so this line rises and falls with markets rather than with anything the company does in a given year. It has also begun putting funds inside workplace plans designed to turn a saver's balance into steady income later in life. The competition is partly other insurers, partly the simplest option of all — moving the money to an ordinary retirement account somewhere else.
Competes with Structured Capital Strategies (Equitable) · Amplify annuities (Athene)
Specialty Benefits InsuranceDental, vision, disability and group life for smaller employers — the largest single revenue line at roughly a fifth, and the most dependable profit: the 2025 claims ratio was the best in company history. Watch hiring levels and claims.Dental, vision, disability and group life for smaller employers — the largest single revenue line at roughly a fifth, and the most dependable profit: the 2025 claims ratio was the best in company history. Watch hiring levels and claims.
In plain English
Dental cleanings, new glasses, and a paycheck that keeps arriving when someone is off sick for months. This is the everyday cover an employer buys for its staff, usually through a benefits broker and often at the same moment it sets up the retirement plan.
Employers pay a monthly premium per worker, Principal pays the claims, and the gap is the profit. In 2025 the gap was the widest in company history, and the second quarter of 2026 ran wider still, with earnings up twenty-nine percent. That makes this the group's highest-quality profit — and the place it has chosen to spend fresh money.
Competes with Group disability and dental (Unum Group) · Group benefits (MetLife) · Group dental (Guardian Life)
Beam BenefitsA digital small-business benefits carrier bought and closed in September 2026, writing about $175M of premium — around one percent of Principal's revenue. Small today; management expects it to lift benefits growth to the top of its range in 2027.A digital small-business benefits carrier bought and closed in September 2026, writing about $175M of premium — around one percent of Principal's revenue. Small today; management expects it to lift benefits growth to the top of its range in 2027.
In plain English
Bought in July 2026 and closed that September: an employee-benefits company built the way a software company would build one. Small employers buy dental, vision and add-on cover through its website, with quoting and pricing run by software. More than twenty-five thousand small employers came with the deal.
It was writing roughly one hundred seventy-five million dollars of premium a year — small beside Principal's own benefits book. The point is what each does for the other: Beam's members move onto the dentist network Principal owns instead of one Beam rented, and Beam's quick online quoting gets pointed at Principal's existing small-business customers.
Competes with Benefits marketplace (Gusto) · Benefits marketplace (Justworks) · Small-business dental plans (Guardian Life)
Investment ManagementThe fee engine: roughly an eighth of revenue for running money in funds, separate accounts and private deals. Earnings rose five percent in 2025, but about $11B walked out of US stock-picking funds in one 2026 quarter.The fee engine: roughly an eighth of revenue for running money in funds, separate accounts and private deals. Earnings rose five percent in 2025, but about $11B walked out of US stock-picking funds in one 2026 quarter.
In plain English
The part that invests other people's money for a fee. Big institutions, retirement savers, everyday fund buyers and wealthy families hand money over to be run in shares, bonds, property and private deals, and Principal charges a small annual slice of whatever it is holding.
The slice is thin but the pile is huge, so the arithmetic cuts both ways: a rising market lifts revenue without anyone selling anything, and a falling one takes it back. Right now money is walking out of its US stock-picking funds — about eleven billion dollars in the second quarter of 2026 — towards cheap index products. Growth is coming instead from private-market deals and from funds that trade on an exchange like a share.
Competes with Multi-asset fund platform (Franklin Templeton) · Retirement target-date funds (T. Rowe Price) · Index funds (Vanguard)
Principal Real EstateThe property arm nested inside the money-management business: roughly $107B of buildings, listed property shares and property loans, around sixth-largest globally. Fees follow property values, so the building cycle sets the pace.The property arm nested inside the money-management business: roughly $107B of buildings, listed property shares and property loans, around sixth-largest globally. Fees follow property values, so the building cycle sets the pace.
In plain English
Buildings, and the loans against buildings. This arm buys property outright on behalf of clients, buys shares in listed property companies, and lends money to other owners as well — roughly a hundred billion dollars of property money in total.
It earns the way the rest of the money-management arm earns: an annual fee on what it holds, so the revenue follows what the buildings are worth. Among the world's large property managers it sits around sixth, behind PGIM Real Estate and Nuveen Real Estate — solid rather than dominant, in a market measured in trillions.
Competes with PGIM Real Estate (PGIM) · Nuveen Real Estate (Nuveen)
Pension Risk TransferEmployers hand over one big cheque and Principal takes over paying their retirees — about $3B across 70 cases in 2025, large-case rather than giant. It swells quarterly revenue without much profit, and the market is in a slow patch.Employers hand over one big cheque and Principal takes over paying their retirees — about $3B across 70 cases in 2025, large-case rather than giant. It swells quarterly revenue without much profit, and the market is in a slow patch.
In plain English
Some employers still owe their retired staff a monthly pension for life and would rather not carry that promise any longer. They pay Principal one very large sum up front; Principal takes on the promise and pays those retirees from then on.
That payment counts as revenue all at once, which is why the retirement side's quarterly revenue lurches around while profits barely move. Principal wrote about three billion dollars of these deals across seventy cases in 2025 — an average size that puts it in the big-case tier rather than the giant one. The whole market shrank in 2025 and started 2026 slowly, so this is a lumpy business in a quiet spell.
Competes with Group annuity buyouts (Athene) · Group annuity buyouts (Prudential) · Large-case group annuities (Legal & General)
International PensionRetirement accounts in Chile, Mexico, Brazil and China, run with local bank partners. About five percent of revenue but the fattest margin in the group, on record savings of roughly $170B in mid-2026. Rules and currencies are the swing factors.Retirement accounts in Chile, Mexico, Brazil and China, run with local bank partners. About five percent of revenue but the fattest margin in the group, on record savings of roughly $170B in mid-2026. Rules and currencies are the swing factors.
In plain English
In Chile, Mexico and Brazil a slice of a worker's pay goes into a private retirement account — in some countries because the law says so, in others because savers choose it. Somebody has to run those accounts. Principal is one of those somebodies, usually alongside a big local bank, and it works with China Construction Bank in China too.
It charges fees on the savings it manages, which hit a record of roughly one hundred seventy billion dollars in mid-2026. Small in revenue, outsized in profit: this carries the highest margin in the group. The risks are less about markets than about governments — Chile's pension rules above all — plus exchange rates, since the fees are earned in local money.
Competes with AFP Habitat pension funds (AFP Habitat) · Afore XXI Banorte retirement funds (Afore XXI Banorte) · Bank-sold retirement plans (Bradesco)
Life InsuranceLife cover sold to business owners, about eight percent of revenue. Steady premiums, modest profit, and an older book shrinking behind it. Reported growth turns negative in 2026 only because the sales arm moved elsewhere in the company.Life cover sold to business owners, about eight percent of revenue. Steady premiums, modest profit, and an older book shrinking behind it. Reported growth turns negative in 2026 only because the sales arm moved elsewhere in the company.
In plain English
Two owners of a small business each want the other's family paid out fairly if one of them dies; a firm wants cover on the one person it cannot replace. Principal writes those policies, mostly for people who are already its retirement or benefits customers.
Premiums arrive every month, claims go out unpredictably, and the gap is the profit — which is why one bad half-year of claims in 2025 pushed the margin below target before it recovered in 2026. An older book of policies is quietly running off in the background, part of its risk handed to reinsurers. Reported growth turns negative in 2026 for a filing reason, not a trading one: the sales arm was moved into another part of the company.
Competes with Business-owner life insurance (MassMutual) · Business-owner life insurance (New York Life) · Individual life insurance (Lincoln Financial)
Named in filings, launches and programs
- Investment OnlyProduct lineGuaranteed-rate contracts for institutions that just want somewhere to park cash; Principal keeps the gap between what it pays them and what it earns.
- Individual Fixed Deferred AnnuitiesProduct linePlain fixed-rate savings annuities held inside the retirement business, separate from the older retail block the company stopped selling.
- Nonqualified deferred compensation and ESOP servicesServiceRunning executive deferred-pay schemes and employee share-ownership plans for the same employers that buy the 401(k) plan.
- Principal Custody SolutionsServiceSafekeeping and ownership records for retirement and other institutional assets; the program was widened to regional and community banks in July 2026.
- Principal® Fit ETF suiteProduct lineFour bond funds that trade like shares, launched in June 2026 and added to an existing lineup of actively run ones.
- Featured Partner ProgramCustomer programAnnounced August 2026: workplace retirement funds carrying private-market slices from fourteen named managers, among them Apollo, Blackstone and KKR.
- BrasilprevBrandBrazilian retirement venture sold through Banco do Brasil's branches; Principal holds a minority stake in it.
- AFP CuprumBrandPrincipal's Chilean pension manager, competing for the mandatory contributions every Chilean worker must save; Principal Vida sits alongside it.
- Principal AforeBrandThe Mexican retirement fund manager, which took in more money than it paid out for six quarters running through 2025.
- China CCB PensionBrandPension venture with China Construction Bank, sitting inside the international retirement business.
- Principal Asset Management BerhadBrandMalaysian fund arm distributing through bank partner CIMB.
- Principal Financial NetworkServiceThe affiliated adviser network that sells Principal's life and benefits products; its 2026 move into the corporate segment is what makes reported life growth look negative.
Investment OnlyProduct line
Guaranteed-rate contracts for institutions that just want somewhere to park cash; Principal keeps the gap between what it pays them and what it earns.
Individual Fixed Deferred AnnuitiesProduct line
Plain fixed-rate savings annuities held inside the retirement business, separate from the older retail block the company stopped selling.
Nonqualified deferred compensation and ESOP servicesService
Running executive deferred-pay schemes and employee share-ownership plans for the same employers that buy the 401(k) plan.
Principal Custody SolutionsService
Safekeeping and ownership records for retirement and other institutional assets; the program was widened to regional and community banks in July 2026.
Principal® Fit ETF suiteProduct line
Four bond funds that trade like shares, launched in June 2026 and added to an existing lineup of actively run ones.
Featured Partner ProgramCustomer program
Announced August 2026: workplace retirement funds carrying private-market slices from fourteen named managers, among them Apollo, Blackstone and KKR.
BrasilprevBrand
Brazilian retirement venture sold through Banco do Brasil's branches; Principal holds a minority stake in it.
AFP CuprumBrand
Principal's Chilean pension manager, competing for the mandatory contributions every Chilean worker must save; Principal Vida sits alongside it.
Principal AforeBrand
The Mexican retirement fund manager, which took in more money than it paid out for six quarters running through 2025.
China CCB PensionBrand
Pension venture with China Construction Bank, sitting inside the international retirement business.
Principal Asset Management BerhadBrand
Malaysian fund arm distributing through bank partner CIMB.
Principal Financial NetworkService
The affiliated adviser network that sells Principal's life and benefits products; its 2026 move into the corporate segment is what makes reported life growth look negative.