DES MOINES, Iowa--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

For the seventh time, Principal Financial Group^® is one of the World’s Most Ethical Companies. Principal^® is one of only 124 companies globally chosen by Ethisphere Institute for this recognition.

The program honors companies that excel in three areas – promoting ethical business standards and practices internally, enabling managers and employees to make good choices, and shaping future industry standards by introducing tomorrow’s best practices today.

“We continually reinforce the importance of innovation, collaboration, and taking action,” said Dan Houston, president, chairman and CEO of Principal. “All of those help drive better solutions for our customers around the globe.”

This is the eleventh year Ethisphere has honored companies who recognize their role in society to influence and drive positive change, consider the impact of their actions on their employees, investors, customers and other key stakeholders and use their values and culture as an underpinning to the decisions they make every day.

“Over the last eleven years we have seen the shift in societal expectations, constant redefinition of laws and regulations and the geo-political climate. We have also seen how companies honored as the World’s Most Ethical respond to these challenges. They invest in their local communities around the world, embrace strategies of diversity and inclusion, and focus on long term-ism as a sustainable business advantage,” explained Ethisphere’s Chief Executive Officer, Timothy Erblich. "Congratulations to everyone at Principal for being recognized as a World's Most Ethical Company."

Methodology & Scoring

The World's Most Ethical Company assessment is based upon the Ethisphere Institute’s Ethics Quotient^® (EQ) framework which offers a quantitative way to assess a company’s performance in an objective, consistent and standardized way. The information collected provides a comprehensive sampling of definitive criteria of core competencies, rather than all aspects of corporate governance, risk, sustainability, compliance and ethics.

Scores are generated in five key categories: ethics and compliance program (35%), corporate citizenship and responsibility (20%), culture of ethics (20%), governance (15%) and leadership, innovation and reputation (10%) and provided to all companies who participate in the process.

Honorees

The full list of the 2017 World's Most Ethical Companies can be found at http://worldsmostethicalcompanies.ethisphere.com/honorees/.

Best practices and insights from the 2017 honorees will be released in a series of infographics and research throughout the year (view or download the 2016 insights). Organizations interested in how they compare to the World’s Most Ethical Companies are invited to participate in the Ethics Quotient.

About Principal^®

Principal helps people and companies around the world build, protect and advance their financial well-being through retirement, insurance and asset management solutions that fit their lives. Our employees are passionate about helping clients of all income and portfolio sizes achieve their goals – offering innovative ideas, investment expertise and real-life solutions to make financial progress possible. To find out more, visit us at principal.com.

About the Ethisphere Institute

The Ethisphere^® Institute is the global leader in defining and advancing the standards of ethical business practices that fuel corporate character, marketplace trust and business success. Ethisphere has deep expertise in measuring and defining core ethics standards using data-driven insights that help companies enhance corporate character. Ethisphere honors superior achievement through its World’s Most Ethical Companies recognition program, provides a community of industry experts with the Business Ethics Leadership Alliance (BELA) and showcases trends and best practices in ethics with the publication of Ethisphere Magazine. More information about Ethisphere can be found at: http://ethisphere.com.

Principal, Principal and symbol design and Principal Financial Group are trademarks and service marks of Principal Financial Services, Inc., a member of the Principal Financial Group.

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