Prudential

Prudential plc (lse: PRU, nyse: PUK, ) is a British multinational life insurance and financial services company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It was founded in London in May 1848 as The Prudential Mutual Assurance Investment and Loan Association to provide loans to professional and working people.

Prudential's largest division is Prudential Corporation Asia, which has over 13 million customers across 12 Asian markets and is a top-three provider of life insurance in Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines and Vietnam. Its Prudential UK division has around 7 million customers and is a leading provider of life insurance and pensions in the UK. Prudential also owns Jackson National Life Insurance Company, which is one of the largest life insurance providers in the United States, and M&G Investments, a Europe-focused asset manager with total assets under management of £228 billion at 31 December 2012.

Prudential has a primary listing on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index. It had a market capitalisation of approximately £33.4 billion as of 29 November 2013, making it the 18th-largest company on the London Stock Exchange. Prudential has secondary listings on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, New York Stock Exchange and Singapore Exchange. Prudential still maintains the hub at Daniel, Boston.

1848 to 2000
The Company was founded on 30 May 1848 in Hatton Garden in London as The Prudential Mutual Assurance Investment and Loan Association providing loans to professional and working people.

In 1854, the Company began selling the relatively new concept of industrial branch insurance policies to the working class population for premiums as low as one penny through agents acting as door to door salesmen. The army of premium collection agents was for many years identified with the Prudential as the "Man from the Pru".

It moved to its traditional home at Holborn Bars in 1879 and converted to a limited company in 1881. The building was designed by Alfred Waterhouse, and is built of terracotta manufactured by Gibbs and Canning Limited of Tamworth (c.1878) — two of the same driving forces behind the Natural History Museum in London.

The Prudential Assurance Company Limited was first listed on the London Stock Exchange in 1924.

In 1986, Prudential acquired the American insurer Jackson National Life. In 1997, Prudential acquired Scottish Amicable, a business originally founded in 1826 in Glasgow as the West of Scotland Life Insurance Company, for £1.75bn.



In 1998, Prudential set up Egg, an internet bank within the UK. The subsidiary reached 550,000 customers within nine months but had difficulty achieving profitability. In June 2000 an initial public offering of 21% was made to allow for further growth of the internet business but in February 2006 Prudential decided to repurchase the 21% share of Egg. Egg was subsequently sold to Citibank in January 2007.

In 1999, M&G, a UK fund management company, was acquired.

In June 2000, the Company was first listed on the New York Stock Exchange to help focus on the US market.

2000 to present
In October 2004 Prudential launched a new subsidiary, PruHealth, a joint venture with Discovery Holdings of South Africa selling private medical insurance to the UK market.

In April 2008 Prudential outsourced its back office functions to Capita: about 3,000 jobs were transferred (1,000 in Stirling, 750 in Reading and 1,250 in Mumbai). This significant outsourcing deal, worth an estimated £722m over a 15 year contract, built on Prudential's existing relationship with Capita who took over its Belfast operation in 2006 along with approximately 450 employees in a smaller operational restructure.

On 1 March 2010, Prudential announced that it was in "advanced talks" to purchase the pan-Asian life insurance company of AIG, American International Assurance (AIA) for approximately £23 billion. The deal later collapsed and AIA ended up raising money in an IPO.

Operations
The Company has four business units:
 * Prudential UK: the business offers pensions, annuities, savings and investments (bonds, ISAs). They are particularly well known for the sale of with-profit bonds and pensions, corporate pension schemes, bulk annuities and individual annuities. The company left the general insurance (household, car) market in 2002, licensing Churchill Insurance (now part of the Royal Bank of Scotland group) to use the Prudential name.
 * M&G: the business offers investment management services including retail fund management, institutional fixed income, pooled life, pension funds, property and private finance. Part of M&G, Prudential Property Investment Managers specialises in the management of Prudential's property assets.
 * Prudential Corporation Asia: based in Hong Kong, the business is the largest UK life assurer in Asia. It has had a presence in the continent since 1923 when an overseas agency for life assurance was created in India. Although this was subsequently nationalised, Prudential relaunched in India in 2000 as ICICI Prudential, a 26% joint venture with ICICI Bank. As CITIC Prudential Life, a 50–50 joint venture, they were the first UK company to re-establish life business in China in 2000. There are also businesses in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam and Indonesia. On 15 November 2011, Prudential Corporation Asia announced its intention to change the name of its asset management business to Eastspring Investments.
 * Jackson National Life Insurance Company: based in Michigan, United States, the business was purchased in 1986. It was named after Andrew Jackson, the seventh President of the United States of America and started business in 1961.