Principal Financial Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:PFG) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Wes Carmichael: Maybe just a higher level question, but with higher rates now, I guess one area where the insurance industry or the retirement industry has seen more growth has been in retail annuities. I know you guys exited the fixed annuity business when you did your new LSG transaction, but curious if there’s any consideration of maybe re-entering that market, especially now with a permuted entity.

Daniel Houston: We continue to participate in the variable annuity market, and the only other thing I’d point out is in mid-year last year, we did launch a registered indexed linked annuity product, which shows up a little bit more as, in our spread-based. That is a business that has grown nicely since its launch, and we see nice momentum in that RILA business. If you’ve been following the annuity trend, you know that the RILA space is the largest growing portion of the RILA market. So we do like that product. We think it’s a nice product, provides a nice risk profile, but that’s probably the extent of it. We are not looking to launch new retail fixed annuities. We’re focused on the variable annuity and the RILA offerings at this point.

Operator: Thank you. We have reached the end of our Q&A. Mr. Houston, your closing comments, please.

Daniel Houston: Well, we feel good about the start of the year and we remain later like focused on delivering our 2024 outlook, including profitable growth, leveraging technology and innovating products. We want to make sure that we are maintaining our disciplined approach to capital employment, which I discussed earlier. And of course, we always want to be mindful of aligning our expenses with revenues. And so, with that, I look forward to [indiscernible] any follow up and appreciate the support for the company. Have a good day.

Operator: Thank you. This concludes today’s conference call. You may disconnect your lines at this time, and we thank you for your participation.