The Insurance Capital Nobody Talks About

The Skyline That Insurance Built

Stand at the corner of Grand Avenue and Eighth Street in downtown Des Moines on a weekday morning and look up. The building directly above you — 801 Grand — is the tallest structure in the state of Iowa. It is the headquarters of Principal Financial Group, a company founded nearly 150 years ago by a Des Moines banker who believed that ordinary people deserved access to financial security.

Des Moines has been called the "Insurance Capital of the World" and the "Hartford of the West." Over 80 insurance companies maintain their headquarters in the Greater Des Moines region. More than 200 operate across the state of Iowa. The finance and insurance sector contributed $22.4 billion to Iowa's $83.3 billion GDP in 2023 — a proportion that ranks Iowa first among all 50 states in insurance industry output as a percentage of gross domestic product.

First. Not top five. Not "among the leaders." First.

"Other cities have industries. Des Moines has THE industry. Insurance didn't just build the skyline — it built the middle class."

How It Started

The story begins in the late 1800s, when Des Moines was a young capital city looking for an economic identity beyond agriculture. The railroads had made it a transportation hub. The state government provided stability. But it was insurance that provided scale.

The logic was almost geographic. Iowa sat in the middle of the country, equidistant from the coasts, with a population that was educated, stable, and — crucially — honest. Insurance is a business built on trust, and Iowa's reputation for straight dealing was worth more than any marketing campaign.

Principal Financial Group was founded in 1879 as the Bankers Life Association. EMC Insurance was incorporated on March 3, 1911. Allied Insurance, IMT Insurance, American Equity Investment Life — the names accumulated over the decades, each one adding another floor to the downtown skyline.

The Skywalk Economy

The insurance industry did not just build office towers. It built the infrastructure that connected them. Des Moines' famous skywalk system — four miles of enclosed, climate-controlled walkways linking downtown buildings — exists in large part because insurance companies needed their employees to move between buildings without losing them to the Iowa winter.

Bill Knapp, the master developer who was instrumental in creating the skywalk system, understood something that urban planners in other cities missed: in a climate where temperatures can drop to 20 below zero, the space between buildings matters as much as the buildings themselves.

Today, you can walk from the Ruan Center to 801 Grand to the EMC building without ever stepping outside. In January, this is not a convenience. It is a necessity.

The Numbers That Matter

The insurance industry in Des Moines is not a legacy sector clinging to relevance. It is a growth engine. The Greater Des Moines Partnership reports that the metro area's financial services sector has added thousands of jobs in the past decade.

The talent pipeline is real. Drake University has one of the most respected actuarial science programs in the country. The University of Iowa and Iowa State University feed graduates into the industry every spring. And the cost of living means that a starting salary in Des Moines buys a quality of life that would require twice the income on either coast.

The City Insurance Forgot to Brag About

The strangest thing about Des Moines' insurance dominance is how little the city talks about it. There is no "Insurance District" with branded signage. There is no annual festival celebrating the industry that employs tens of thousands of residents.

This may be an Iowa thing. The culture here does not celebrate wealth or power in the way that coastal cities do. The executives who run billion-dollar insurance companies in Des Moines drive pickup trucks and coach Little League. The actuaries who calculate risk for a living spend their weekends at Iowa Hawkeye football games, which is its own form of risk management.

But the modesty should not be mistaken for insignificance. When you drive into Des Moines from any direction and see that skyline rising from the prairie — 801 Grand, the Ruan Center, the EMC tower — you are looking at something remarkable. A city that found its purpose, built an industry around it, and never stopped growing.

The insurance capital of America is not Hartford. It is not New York. It is a city of 215,000 people in the middle of Iowa, and it has been hiding in plain sight for over a century.