Back to Work

FinTech / Retirement · Principal Financial Group

The Billion-Dollar Nest Egg Problem

Reimagining retirement for 5M+ users — doubling contribution activity.

Jun 2020 – Feb 2024

5M+

Users

2×

Contribution Activity Lift

15%

Annuity Uptake Increase

35%

Rollover Completion Improvement

2.5 → 4

CSAT Improvement

The Problem

Principal Financial's digital retirement platform was fragmented — users couldn't see a complete picture of their retirement health, and personalization was non-existent. Contribution activity was flat, annuity uptake was declining, and CSAT scores were at 2.5.

The Approach

  • 01Unified account visibility across all retirement products into a single dashboard
  • 02Built personalized planning tools with goal-setting and contribution recommendations
  • 03Redesigned invoicing and transaction workflows with event-driven logging
  • 04Implemented workflow-level observability using OpenTelemetry-style traces and SLO-backed alerts
  • 05Standardised RBAC/ABAC entitlements for privileged financial actions

Impact

  • ✓2x lift in contribution activity across 5M+ users
  • ✓15% increase in annuity uptake
  • ✓35% improvement in rollover completions
  • ✓CSAT improved from 2.5 to 4.0
  • ✓Reconciliation TAT improved from 48 hours to 12 hours
All case studies