Pros
Midwestern sensibilities. Well managed. Great culture. Support and encourage entrepreneurship. Best or next best-in-class in all core competencies: Retirement, insurance and investments. Great benefits. Great overall employee experience.
Cons
At times cautious to their detriment. With few exceptions their platform--pricing and client solutions--are available to captive and non-captive advisors alike. Captive advisors, while we are open architecture (full access to non-Principal products), there is an over-emphasis via compensation disparity to favor PFG whenever possible. Coming from twenty year advisor and management wirehouse background where proprietary product favoritism was regulated out of existence, unsure how they get away with it. But who am I to complain? Statutory employee--employer relationship (advisors are essentially contract employees with full benefits), while appealingly flexible for advisors, is said to be not-so-much in the eyes of the IRS!