Products November 8, 2007

Principal Tool Simplifies Financial Liability Forecasting for ESOPs

November 8, 2007 (PLANSPONSOR.com) - The Principal Financial Group has announced a new tool to make the task of financial liability forecasting for Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs) easier and more efficient.
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My Principal ESOP Repurchase Liability Solution (My PERLS) will be available in early 2008, and the Web-based solution will make it easy for plan sponsors to complete a repurchase liability study at their convenience, the announcement said. Plans’ annual census data can be fed into My PERLS automatically, eliminating duplicative efforts and increasing the accuracy of projections, according to the company.

Plan sponsors will use My PERLS to project the amount of cash needed to fund future distributions to participants who leave the company. The tool uses a client’s most recent year-end data to make assumptions about value and growth of the workforce and analyzes key factors such as employee compensation levels, vesting schedules, employee gender, and typical employee turnover rates.

My PERLS is provided as a standard tool to ESOP clients of The Principal.

“My PERLS is one more way The Principal is helping ESOP plan sponsors to ease their fiduciary and administrative burdens,” says Dennis Long, vice president, The Principal, in the announcement.

More information is available at  www.principal.com/MyPERLS .

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