529 financial professionals

Give your clients an edge

How financial professionals can assist clients to fund the leaders of tomorrow

With the escalating cost of education and the challenges of inflation, financial professionals have a unique opportunity to support clients. As a financial professional, your goal is to assist your clients in saving for their goals and stages of life. Often, your clients’ lives include children, followed by grandchildren, providing you with the opportunity to help your clients with education savings, legacy goals, and estate planning. Scholar’s Edge can provide your clients with smarter choices for education savings.

Why should you work with Scholar’s Edge?

  • Deep asset allocation expertise – Principal is the largest provider of active, multi-manager target date funds in the United States.1
  • Institutional-quality portfolio construction – Our portfolios utilize multi-asset and multi-manager strategies, combining the advantages of active management and the cost savings of passive management. In effect, balancing risk-reward with cost efficiency to help your clients meet their education savings needs.
  • Glide path innovation – We’ve built robust and sophisticated glide path technology informed by real data on economics, markets, and student behavior. Our glidepath moves from capital appreciation to capital preservation as the year of enrollment approaches.
  • Diverse range of investment options – 11 Year of Enrollment Portfolios, four Target Risk Portfolios, and 15 individual fund options, available in A, C, and R unit classes, to meet your client’s risk and return needs.2
  • Capital preservation – The Scholar’s Edge Capital Preservation Portfolio offers a guaranteed annual interest rate of at least 1%.3
  • Low minimum investment requirement, high maximum investment amount and no income-based parameters that would make some earners ineligible.
  • Access to knowledgeable teams – At Principal, we have dedicated 529 resources, including portfolio management, product specialists, marketing and sales. Our experts can provide deep insights into the trends that impact 529 plans, and bright ideas for how you can benefit from incorporating 529 plan offerings into your overall business building strategy while serving your clients’ best interests.
  • Online functionality and support for clients – We provide resources and tools such as four savings and repayment calculators, a content library, a social media library and employer plan materials.

Interested in comparing the Scholar’s Edge 529 Plan to other advisor-sold plans? Click here to begin comparing now.

Contributions options you can offer clients

Your clients can contribute to a 529 plan in a variety of ways, so they can choose what works best for them.

Payroll direct deposit

Your clients can arrange to add money to their account regularly from their payroll using direct deposit (if allowed by their employer) or contribute directly from their bank account. If you have clients who own a business, they can offer 529 plans as a benefit to their employees using payroll direct deposit.

Estate planning

Work with your clients to make 529 plans part of their estate planning:

  • Up to $18,000 individual per year
  • Up to $36,000 filing jointly per year

Lump sum over 5 years:

  • Up to $90,000 individual
  • Up to $180,000 filing jointly

Contributions to a Scholar’s Edge account may continue until a plan reaches $500,000 per beneficiary.

Additional client benefits

Ugift®

This convenient, free service lets families and friends contribute to students’ 529 plans to help them save for college. Gift contributions can be made at any time using the account's unique code.

Upromise®

Clients can join Upromise for free and link a debit or credit card to their account. When they use that card(s) at participating dining and shopping partners, a percentage of eligible spending will be deposited in their Upromise account. Those funds can be automatically transferred to their Scholar’s Edge 529 plan. Sign up is quick, easy, and secure.

Contact us

Dedicated Principal sales team:
800-787-1621
Monday through Friday
9:00 a.m. – 8:00 p.m. ET

1 Source: Sway Research State of Target Date Market, 2024. Rating refers to the AUM in the U.S. market. This ranking includes both Target Date CIT and Target Date funds.

2 Unit class availability varies by broker-dealer. Please check with your firm for details on how the plan is offered.

3 The Portfolio invests 100% of its assets in the Scholar’s Edge Guaranteed Contract issued to the Plan by Principal Life Insurance Company. Under the Contract, principal and a rate of interest are guaranteed to the Plan by Principal Life. Principal Life guarantees the interest rate under the Contract will be at least 1%. The Portfolio is subject to the risk that Principal Life will become unable to make its payment obligations under the Contract.