Principal Financial Group and Entrust: Addressing Online Fraud with Biometric Authentication
Discover how Principal Financial Group teamed up with Entrust to reduce account takeovers with biometric authentication.
Introduction
Principal Financial Group® is a global leader in retirement services, insurance, and asset management, serving millions of individuals and businesses. With customers entrusting Principal® with their financial futures, maintaining secure digital access is paramount.
Across the financial services industry, fraudsters increasingly target retirement accounts during the registration process – accounts tied to real investments but lacking login credentials or multi-factor authentication. These accounts can be vulnerable due to reliance on traditional Knowledge-Based Authentication (KBA), a method that asks users to answer personal questions and, by itself, can be compromised through social media or data brokers.
To stay ahead of evolving threats while preserving a seamless user experience, Principal sought to strengthen its registration verification approach with an even more secure, scalable solution.
The Challenge
The retirement business at Principal saw an increase in fraudulent online registrations. Attackers targeted dormant, unregistered customer accounts using stolen personal data to bypass traditional KBA methods.
These attempts created heightened urgency to further strengthen registration protections and reduce the risk of account takeovers.
Key challenges included:
- Rapid deployment: Fraud was becoming more common, demanding a solution that could be tested, validated, and deployed quickly.
- Balancing security with usability: Principal needed a process that was intuitive for customers and could help minimize abandonment during registration.
- Navigating new territory: Biometric authentication was the clear answer and it’s use for retirement account registration was still developing – creating an opportunity to help define best practices for this use case.
- Vendor evaluation and compliance: The company had to identify a vendor capable of delivering both government ID verification and real-time biometric authentication, while also helping to meet stringent privacy, legal, and risk standards.
Principal chose Onfido – now rebranded as Entrust IDV – as a vendor to support a stronger, customer‑friendly registration experience while meeting compliance requirements.
The Solution
In late 2023, Principal implemented the Entrust Digital ID Verification Authentication platform, replacing knowledge-based authentication with biometric identity proofing centered on facial recognition. The rollout was completed in just five months – an impressive feat made possible by agile collaboration across security, legal, and customer experience teams.
The Entrust solution combined advanced biometric technology with robust identity verification, enabling Principal to:
- Authenticate users in real time using facial recognition matched against government-issued IDs.
- Streamline the user experience through journey mapping and intuitive design.
- Support compliance with privacy and risk standards while maintaining operational agility.
- Educate and support customers with clear messaging and guidance, helping users unfamiliar with biometric authentication feel confident and secure.
With the solution in place, Principal was able to strengthen fraud controls while maintaining a smoother registration experience.
The agility allowed us to go from vendor selection to full deployment in less than five months.
Melanie Bergen
Retirement Income Solutions BISO, Principal Financial Group
The Results
The impact of biometric authentication program at Principal was significant and meaningful – both in terms of fraud prevention and customer experience.
Key outcomes included:
- Fraud reduction: Fraudulent account registrations – previously driven largely by KBA exploitation – declined significantly.**
- Improved authentication success: User success rates rose by 10%, reflecting a more intuitive and reliable verification process.**
- Reduced abandonment: The percentage of users who started but failed to complete authentication dropped by 34%, indicating a smoother and more engaging experience.**
“The new program has prevented fraudulent account takeovers while making verification faster and more intuitive.”
— Melanie Bergen, Retirement Income Solutions BISO, Principal Financial Group
The success Principal saw helped earn a 2025 CSO50 Award, recognizing its leadership in security innovation and customer protection.
** Data represents the time period of May, 2024 through December, 2024, sourced from OnFido dashboards and fraud investigations.
Looking Ahead
The biometric authentication initiative allows Principal to better secure customers’ digital access – especially in the retirement sector, where fraud targeting seniors is on the rise. According to LIMRA’s 2024 Financial Crimes and Fraud Prevention Benchmarking Study, 50% of respondents reported increased fraud targeting vulnerable adults, and 61% saw more account takeover attempts.
With the Entrust platform in place, Principal is now exploring additional ways to evolve the experience, including:
- Expanded biometric modalities
- Loyalty integrations and personalized experiences
“We’re proud to be one of the first companies in the retirement sector to use biometric authentication for online registration,” says Bergen. “It shows how we can help counter security threats while still providing ease of use for customers."
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