Principal Financial Group 2023 Sustainability Report: Prioritizing Consumer and Product Impact
Enabling product equity and access
Originally published in Principal Financial Group 2023 Sustainability Report
Prioritizing consumer and product impact
Enabling product equity and access
We understand the different obstacles individuals and businesses face when planning, protecting, and saving for the future. We are uniquely positioned to remove these barriers to make financial and insurance products, services, and solutions more accessible through relevant and inclusive experiences and choices.
Our approach
We understand that financial planning encompasses many factors like age, gender, marital status, family size, cultural values, savings behavior, tenure, income, career path, and retirement dreams. We focus on understanding these variables so we can provide individuals and businesses with personal and relevant messages to enable inclusive experiences. We also work to remove barriers to make it easier to understand and engage with the products and services we offer.
We develop educational programs and unique content designed to reach and facilitate connections between women, people of color, members of the LGBTQ+ community, and other underserved populations. Additionally, we apply an inclusion lens to our marketing materials, images, and content to make sure they represent all our customers and the diverse population we serve.
Disabilities or impairment support
We have a dedicated team to help ensure we meet Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1—Level AA compliance across all mediums and platforms through which our audiences interact with us. We have also built testing into our development process throughout our design system and engineers to ensure new code is accessible.
Our websites support:
- compatibility with the screen reader technology (includes our mobile app),
- contrast ratios that comply with WCAG to assist users with color blindness,
- alternative text descriptions for images and other visual elements on the page,
- proper tab order to ensure content is read in the correct order, and
- zoom elements to 200% without the page breaking.
Hard-of-hearing or deaf individuals can reach a retirement specialist in our Participant Contact Center using their state’s relay system and teletype (TTY). This connects the person with a relay customer assistant, who voices messages to Principal and types messages to the hard-of- hearing individual. Our representatives can also make outbound calls to hard-of-hearing participants using relay services.
"Having employee benefits allows me to plan for the future. Knowing that the benefits are there and the financial security is there helps me feel at ease when it comes to not only executing my job, but also working toward a future for myself.”
Commercial Sales Training Manager
Shaw Industries (Principal client)
Language and cultural resources
We use the Voiance Language Line to communicate with people who speak languages other than English. This service currently provides interpreters for 200 languages, giving individuals who call in access to valuable information interpreted into their primary language.
Our suite of resources includes:
- Spanish-speaking bilingual and bicultural customer service phone professionals.
- Bilingual and bicultural retirement education specialists to facilitate onsite and/or virtual enrollment and education meetings.
- Culturally enhanced enrollment materials including a digital enrollment experience, Principal® Real Start in Spanish, investor profile quiz, promotional materials, and Spanish-language plan statements.
- The ability for participants to change their language settings to Spanish in the Principal® app.
- Interactive Spanish-speaking voice response system.
- A Spanish version of principal.com (principal.com/es) and financial wellness education through Principal® Hola Futuro (“hello future”) at principal.com/es/holafuturo.
Gender-neutral language
To help foster gender inclusivity, we are making changes to our existing systems and processes. With select U.S. businesses, we are:
- Implementing gender-neutral language by removing gender-specific salutations (Mr., Mrs., Miss, Ms.) from correspondence, using full names instead.
- Adding non-binary as a selection in gender fields on forms and screen fields and/or removing the gender field.
- Updating policy and contract language to be gender neutral, which applies to all interactions (customer, distributor, employee, vendor).
- Continuing underwriting and rate approaches that do not discriminate.
Designing equitable and inclusive products
Another way we work to enable access to products and services is by providing affordable and customizable products to customers around the world.
- The Principal® EASE pooled employer plan (PEP) offered in the U.S. combines integrated retirement plan administration, customer service, and investment fiduciary capabilities enabling employers to offer an efficient, affordable, and professionally-managed retirement solution. Since inception in 2021, a majority of adopting employers are offering retirement benefits for the first time.
- Simply Retirement by Principal®, our digital 401(k) product, makes retirement plans more accessible to businesses with less than 100 employees. It’s a straightforward cost that small businesses can plan for each month.
- Principal has a Shariah-compliant money market fund1 available on Malaysia’s leading eWallet, Touch ‘n Go. Customers with as little as RM10 (US$2) can start their investing journey. More than 3.4 million Malaysians invest in the fund, and the number continues to grow steadily.
- Principal has a suite of target date funds1 available in Malaysia. This retirement solution offers simple, hassle-free retirement planning to customers in that country.
Our actions and performance in 2023
We’ve launched new products in 2023 that further expand access.
- We launched our first registered linked index annuity (RILA) in May to meet the growing demand for annuity solutions to help customers manage market ups and downs through investment options that offer choice and personalization, which can include climate focused options.
- In April we launched the Principal® Intelligent QDIA (IQDIA), a more personalized default investment alternative that delivers a hybrid approach that evolves with participants throughout their career and life stages. It starts by defaulting younger participants into an option to help meet their early savings needs. Then, at a later age set by the plan, automatically transitions to a managed account service that can be tailored by participants to help meet their needs as they approach retirement. IQDIA can help remove the guesswork and can increase participants’ confidence in their financial future.
- Un our Workplace Benefits vision insurance offering, we’ve extended our in-network provider options to include local retail locations in rural areas to improve access.
- We launched our Hospital Indemnity product in early 2023. The product helps consumers focus on medical recovery rather than the financial burden of hospitalization. Plan designs are flexible and allow employers to offer plan design(s) to fits their employees’ needs.
- We launched an updated version of our disability income product. The redesigned product simplifies the offering for consumers and provides more flexible future insurability options to help maintain coverage as earnings and cost of living increase over time.
To learn more, read the Principal Financial Group 2023 Sustainability Report.
1The referenced funds are not available in the U.S. or to U.S. investors and are mentioned for information purposes only.
Insurance products issued by Principal National Life Insurance Co (except in NY) and Principal Life Insurance Company®. Plan administrative services offered by Principal Life. Principal Funds, Inc. is distributed by Principal Funds Distributor, Inc. Securities offered through Principal Securities, Inc., member SIPC and/or independent broker/dealers. Referenced companies are members of the Principal Financial Group®, Des Moines, IA 50392.
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