Principal Financial Group Inc. has launched a new municipal bond fund, Prinicipal Opportunistic Municipal Fund (PMOAX), the company announced today.

The fund’s strategy provides the opportunity to invest across a broad range of credit qualities, durations and geographic exposures, said Doug Gaylor, the fund’s portfolio manager, in a release.

The strategy allows the team to invest across the broad municipal spectrum without being tied explicitly to a benchmark or an index.

“The fund’s mandate helps us uncover potential in the municipal market that an individual investor might miss,” said Gaylor, who leads Principal Global Investors’ four-person team that currently manages more than $3.5 billion in municipal fixed-income assets.

The Principal California Municipal Fund, launched in July 1989, is the only other offering from Principal Funds that invests primarily in municipal obligations, said Jaime Naig, a Principal spokeswoman.

State and local governments issue municipal securities to finance a wide variety of infrastructure projects. At the start of 2012, there were more than 1 million different municipal bonds outstanding, totaling $3.7 trillion, with 75 percent held by individual “retail” investors, according the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

On July 31, the SEC issued a comprehensive report with recommendations for enhancing investor protections in this market, which has not been subject to the same level of regulation as other sectors of the capital markets.

Principal’s new fund, which had an actual inception date of June 14, has already attracted $15.4 million in investments as of July 31, according to a Morningstar summary on Principal’s website.

An in-depth interview with the management team introduces the fund, the team’s investment philosophy and thoughts on the current municipal marketplace.