CEO Charles Lowrey discusses how Prudential Financial, a 150-year-old company has remained resilient through economic and global challenges, from the Great Depression to the recent pandemic. He also discusses adapting to evolving customer needs by embracing AI and tech innovation.
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TechTranscript
00:00Career changes are going to occur for the vast majority of people.
00:06And so that is something that young people just need to understand.
00:11The second point I'd make is that careers are never linear.
00:16So even if you do stay in the same company, you may get promoted sometimes.
00:21You may have lateral moves.
00:23That's all OK, because at the end of the day,
00:27when you think about your career,
00:29you are a compilation of your experiences that you had beforehand.
00:35And when you move career or when you move into a new position,
00:40you're bringing all those experiences with you,
00:44which enables you to provide a different perspective than others might.
00:48So what I would say is that one should embrace
00:53career changes or moves within a company.
00:57Because those make you a better employee over the long term
01:02because of the variety of experiences you have.
01:12Prudential has been around for 150 years
01:16and has seen all sorts of different global economic conditions.
01:20It has seen the Great Depression, the Great Recession, two pandemics
01:24and a host of other things.
01:26So we do two things in order to make sure that we are resilient
01:31and we are strong.
01:32First is we always look to our financial strength.
01:36We are an extremely strong company.
01:41We make promises for decades, and clients need to understand
01:46that we will be there for them.
01:48The second point is that we don't react to any particular
01:54economic circumstance because we are looking through the cycle
01:59and we manage through cycle in order to make sure
02:03that we are resilient for the long term.
02:06When I think about resilience,
02:09I think about a number of different components,
02:12the first of which starts with talent.
02:15If you have great talent, if you have great employees,
02:18they, by definition, are resilient.
02:21The second component, though, is do they all believe in a North Star,
02:26which is our purpose?
02:28And if you have talented people that are all going in the same direction,
02:33that helps with resilience.
02:35The third component is, do they understand their role
02:41in the company, in fulfilling our purpose?
02:44And if you have someone that understands their role,
02:46that they come in every day and they know what they're doing,
02:49that will make them resilient.
02:52The fourth component is that the company itself, Prudential,
02:56needs to support our employees,
03:00both in terms of, obviously, financial remuneration, which is table stakes,
03:04but also in terms of their health and their wellness.
03:07And Prudential has extraordinary benefits to support our employees.
03:12You put those four components together.
03:15And when we face something like we did in the pandemic,
03:18where we were one of the first companies to go remote
03:22and we had over 40,000 people in 40 companies go remote within 48 hours,
03:26our employees were knocking down challenges right and left
03:31in order to support our customers.
03:32I couldn't have been more proud of the company and our employees.
03:37And to me, that is the single greatest example of resilience that we have faced.
03:49Some of the biggest challenges that we face today are external
03:53and others are obviously internal.
03:56But I would say that the biggest challenge we face today
04:00is the rate of change that our customers are experiencing,
04:06both in terms of their needs and their desire.
04:10So in terms of their needs,
04:12you think about the aging demographic of our customers.
04:15You think about the different needs they have, the health needs,
04:18the insurance needs, the investment needs.
04:20Those are all changing.
04:22But then you think about the customers and how they are demanding services.
04:27They may want them completely digitally online.
04:30We can do that.
04:31They may want it in a hybrid experience where they start digital
04:34and then talk to one of our advisors.
04:37They may just want to talk to our advisors
04:39or they may want to talk to their own advisor.
04:42And therefore, as we innovate, as we change, as our customers change,
04:47we're also changing the way in which we deliver those products to our customers
04:51in terms of speed, in terms of specificity of product.
04:56And that's where AI, which we've been using for a long time, for 10 years,
05:00and now generative AI, comes into play.
05:04And that's where we're going to be able to deliver those products
05:07a long time, for 10 years, and now generative AI comes into play.
05:12And as an example, if you think about one of our simplified term products,
05:19it used to take 22 days to underwrite, and now it takes a few seconds.
05:24That's the kind of speed and the kind of innovation that's taking place
05:28in the world today, in our industry today, and certainly within Credential.