When Principal Financial CEO Deanna Struble mandated four-hour in-person artificial intelligence training sessions for her executive team, the initial reaction wasn’t entirely enthusiastic.
“There was some resistance from the team,” Struble recalled. The training was held in July as part of a monthly meeting at the company’s headquarters in Des Moines, the company said. “Some people said, ‘Why do we need to do this?'”
However, Struble felt that for Principal Financial to get more employees accustomed to using AI on a regular basis, it was important that executives had knowledge of how these tools worked and how they were integrated into workflows.
After executive training, Principal Financial, which sells insurance policies, retirement savings plans, and wealth management services, rolled out its first AI literacy program this year. All employees are encouraged to take four different courses that take less than 10 hours to cover the basics of AI: how to write prompts and the importance of leveraging the right data to train large-scale language models that can generate the right responses.
Principal Financial said 82% of its 20,000 employees have completed at least one course, and about 39% have completed all four courses. Principal Financial plans to make AI training part of new hire training and offer more comprehensive and specialized training for various roles in 2026.
Struble said AI will play a key role in supporting Principal Financial’s three business priorities identified at an investor event a year ago. The company aims to sell more retirement and insurance services to small and medium-sized businesses in the United States, attract more global institutional customers, and grow demand for the retirement services it sells to individuals. AI and other emerging technologies are expected to play a role in driving these outcomes.
“When you think about technology, it’s not a separate field,” Struble says.
She says AI will ultimately change not only how Principal Financial attracts and retains talent, but also how employees talk to customers. As AI agents proliferate and are expected to change the way individuals plan their finances and retirement, companies like Principal Financial will need to evolve to compete in a world where AI-powered do-it-yourself financial planning becomes an increasingly reality.
Among the AI tools that Principal Financial has already deployed are generative AI assistants that help with basic tasks like summarizing and drafting emails. From just 800 active users at the beginning of 2025, it is now accessed by more than 14,000 employees and used regularly by more than 8,000 people. The company’s AI literacy program was a key factor leading to increased usage.
Other tools include access to the enterprise version of OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot. An AI coding assistant tool used by information technology teams. And recently deployed AI agents answer HR-related questions.
Principal Financial also relies on 700 AI “ambassadors” across the company to help colleagues with questions about technology.
Struble, who joined Principal Financial as an intern in 1990 and took on the roles of CEO and chairman this year, said he noticed a change when he asked employees at meetings about how they were using AI.
“More and more people are not just looking at you blankly, but they’re also having real-life examples of how they’re incorporating that into their personal daily work, as well as how they’re leveraging it in their teams,” she says.
Principal Financial’s investment in AI training has helped it outperform the regular use of generative AI tools observed at other companies. A recent PwC survey of nearly 50,000 employees across 48 major countries found that only 14% of employees use generative AI on a daily basis, and 45% said they had not used this form of technology in the past 12 months. The numbers for AI agents were even lower, with just 6% of people using the technology daily and 57% of people having no experience with the technology.
Elevating skills to the corporate ladder
Daniele Grassi, CEO of technology education provider General Assembly, says individual workers and companies are evolving their thinking when it comes to upskilling. “They realize there’s a rift with their own employees,” Grassi said. “Employees aren’t buying it.”
But companies want to prove a return on investment with their AI investments and are ramping up training programs to get more buy-in from employees. “With the advent of AI, the need for upskilling is impacting a broader population rather than niche technologists,” Grassi says.
The General Assembly has evolved its offering. When it was founded in 2011, it focused on technology professionals and those seeking employment in the field. However, some of the new AI courses were developed for executives, business consultants, and non-technical employees who could benefit from learning more about AI in their work.
At Principal Financial, investing in an AI literacy program also alleviated concerns that could hinder regular usage. “Understandably, there was a lot of fear about AI,” Struble says. “When I went into town halls, you know, a lot of the questions were about reactions to newspaper headlines. It was, ‘Will AI impact my job?'”
Her pitch to employees is that AI will make their jobs more productive, and that while some roles may change, AI won’t necessarily eliminate jobs. “If we’re a growing company, of course we’re going to need more employees to meet the needs of our customers, and with AI we might be able to do that with the same number of people,” Struble says.
And since July, we’ve already seen an evolution in the way executives talk about AI. Each month, leaders will share how they personally use AI and how their teams use AI. These conversations became even more fascinating throughout the fall.
“If it wasn’t for the foundation, I don’t think any of this would have happened,” Struble said.
