Michael Chevy Castranova | The Gazette | June 30, 2021<\/p>\n
Principal Financial will get out of the business of selling life insurance and fixed annuities to consumers, the Des Moines-based company said earlier this week.<\/p>\n
The changes to its portfolio and capital management strategy come after a review intended to \u201cdrive growth\u201d and sharpen the carrier\u2019s overall focus, it said on its website.<\/p>\n
It plans to \u201cfully exit\u201d the retail market and will discontinue new sales of term life and universal life products to retail \u2014 that is, non-business \u2014 consumers.<\/p>\n
Principal spokeswoman Teresa Thoensen told The Gazette on Thursday current customers won\u2019t be affected by the decision and their policies will continue to be serviced.<\/p>\n
In all, Principal aims to sell off reserves worth approximately $25 billion in annuities and life insurance plans, it said on its website. No timeline was given for the divestitures.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis thorough and intensive review considered strategic fit, client needs, financial impact and the risk profile of our business lines,\u201d Dan Houston, Principal\u2019s chairman, president and CEO, said in a statement on the carrier\u2019s website.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe identified opportunities to reduce complexity and risk, improve our return profile and increase our cash flow conversion to better enable us to execute on our strategy, reinvest in growth and support our financial strength.\u201d<\/p>\n
Principal will continue to sell variable annuities and, Thoensen said in an email, \u201cWe will have additional annuity offerings to complement our full suite of retirement products.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve also announced a new $1.2 billion share repurchase authorization, which underscores our commitment to return excess capital to shareholders,\u201d Houston added in his statement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Michael Chevy Castranova | The Gazette | June 30, 2021 Principal Financial will get out of the business of selling life insurance and fixed annuities to consumers, the Des Moines-based company said earlier this week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"off","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-474","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-global","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/insurance.vincent-chen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/insurance.vincent-chen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/insurance.vincent-chen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insurance.vincent-chen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insurance.vincent-chen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=474"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/insurance.vincent-chen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":475,"href":"https:\/\/insurance.vincent-chen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474\/revisions\/475"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/insurance.vincent-chen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insurance.vincent-chen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insurance.vincent-chen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}