When Deanna Strable was approached to take on the role of CFO at Principal Financial Group, she was taken by surprise. Having spent most of her 30-year career in leading business units rather than focusing on finance, Strable initially questioned whether she was the right fit for a position traditionally held by financial experts.
“Ultimately,” she recalls, “what I learned from our board and CEO was that they really wanted someone who could partner with them in driving the company forward—someone who had the ability, obviously, not only to understand the financials but also to be able to do so within the context of appreciating and analyzing how the day-to-day impact of our operations on our financials related to our long-term strategy.”
Read MoreThis blend of operational insight and financial expertise would come to define her tenure as CFO. Over her 7 years in the role, she led the company through significant strategic shifts. Under her leadership, Principal exited underperforming and commoditized businesses, such as retail annuities and individual life insurance. These moves were part of a broader plan to focus the company on areas with greater long-term-growth potential, including retirement solutions and asset management.
Strable also reshaped the company’s financial priorities, moving beyond a narrow focus on earnings growth to a broader set of metrics, including return on equity, capital allocation, and customer satisfaction. Her emphasis on optimizing multiple metrics, rather than chasing short-term financial gains, helped to lay the groundwork for sustainable success. Strable’s career journey as CFO was a testament to the power of strategic thinking in driving both financial and long-term business growth.
“Don’t assume that everyone is on the same page—be deliberate in ensuring that business leaders are aligned on shared priorities and outcomes. Surround yourself with the right people and leverage their strengths. Above all, don’t take yourself or your work too seriously.” –Deanna Strable, COO & president (CFO emerita), Principal Financial Group
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CFOTL: Tell us about Principal Financial Group … what does this company do, and what are its offerings today?
Strable: Principal Financial Group is known as a global financial services company. We have 20,000 employees in 80 countries around the globe. We were actually started 145 years ago as an Iowa-based insurance company. We still offer insurance products today, but our product set has morphed more into the retirement sector. We’re one of the top three or four 401(k) providers in the United States. We’re also a leading asset manager. From an insurance perspective, we really focus on offering a great breadth of employee benefits solutions to small and medium-size businesses. I think that folks don’t always realize the scope of the offerings that we can provide, not to mention our geographic footprint around the world. In fact, more than half of our customers and half of our employees are outside the U.S.
Read MoreCFOTL: When you first stepped into the CFO role, was the company that much different from today with regard to capital structure, lines of business, and so forth?
Strable: We actually had two pretty significant divestitures during the time that I was CFO that have made the company much more focused and changed its profile. We decided to exit both the retail annuity business and the sale of life insurance to individuals. We still are in the annuity business, but we are very much focused on the variable annuity space. In the life insurance area, we now offer it only through employers or business owners. Thus, in the one situation, we stopped a product line, while in the other, we left a customer segment. These decisions were based on financial performance, as well as our analysis of how successful we might be in trying to differentiate ourselves in the future with these two offerings that had become very, very commoditized in their markets. They simply weren’t generating the returns that we or our shareholders required. So, one difference that has occurred is that we have become much more focused on our businesses that show a great prospect of being successful over the long term.
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Principal Financial Group | www.principal.com | Des Moines, IA