The publicly traded, Midwestern insurer parent of a mutual fund is marking the overall organization's 145th anniversary.

Principal [profile] is turning 145 this month, confirms Dan Houston, chairman, president, and CEO of Principal. Principal's birthday was on July 1, a Principal spokesperson tells MFWire, and the company was founded in 1879 by Edward Temple.

"Temple believed in the importance of life insurance but felt most life insurance companies at that time were targeting wealthy individuals. He envisioned a better, less expensive way for everyday people to protect their families," the Principal spokesperson tells MFWire.

The spokesperson says that Principal’s initial focus was life insurance. As for Principal's entry into the asset management business, "As a practical matter, we have been investing since our early years, adapting a more aggressive posture in the early 1930s and expanding to mutual funds and real estate investments in the 1960s," the spokesperson says. "We ultimately spun off our investment-only services with a subsidiary named Principal Capital Management (now Principal Asset Management) in 1999 to focus on investment-only services for the institutional asset management marketplace."

The spokesperson adds that in 1968, Principal launched a mutual fund subsidiary, and then sold its first mutual funds in 1969.

Now, Principal's asset management business holds an AUM of $554 billion as of March 31, the spokesperson says. The AM business also has "more than 200 distinct strategies, with additional strategies customized to client parameters and benchmarks," the spokesperson adds.

Principal's AM business also includes 114 mutual funds, 11 ETFs, and more than 5,600 employees globally. 

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