Originally Posted by
TRAVELSIG
I know very little about what Prudential actually does- are they a competitor perhaps of Lloyds? If so perhaps Mr. Smith could be very worldly? I really don't enough to make any judgement at all.
Prudential in the US is a publicly owned insurance company, mainly focused on life policies. There are four main areas in an insurance company: sales, underwriting, claims and investing.
The investing part is what they do with the premiums and their firm capital ... And hope to make money off of it. In fact, many insurers (particularly p&c insurers) price their policies to expect net losses just so they can have more dollars to invest...and hope those investments outperform the insurance losses.
Pru has a general account in the hundreds of billions...they invest in nearly everything under the sun. They are one of the larger investors in direct property (owning buildings outright). Smith ran the property investing area.