Prudential: Three-Cent Burial Policies, Snake Hill and an $8 Billion Fraud

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Prudential Financial began in Newark, New Jersey, in 1875, when John F. Dryden founded the Widows and Orphans Friendly Society, soon renamed the Prudential Friendly Society. Its one product was industrial burial insurance for the urban working class at three cents a week, collected door to door by agents. Relative to the death benefit, those premiums cost more than ordinary life insurance, and when a family missed a payment the policy lapsed and the company kept everything paid in. In 1907 Louis Brandeis pushed Massachusetts reforms that let savings banks sell cheaper life insurance. Prudential's Rock of Gibraltar symbol was inspired by Snake Hill, a rock formation in Secaucus beside the New Jersey Turnpike.

In 1954, after blockbusting in East Palo Alto, Prudential and Equitable refused to insure mortgages for white families in integrated neighborhoods, in line with FHA and VA redlining rules. The 1981 purchase of the brokerage Bache led to an SEC finding that Prudential Securities had defrauded investors of nearly $8 billion through risky limited partnerships sold as safe income, and a 1993 settlement of $330 million plus $41 million in fines. A $2 billion class action over policy churning followed in 1997. Prudential sold its health unit to Aetna for $1 billion in 1999, demutualized, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in December 2001. By 2019 it was the largest U.S. insurance provider, with over $815 billion in assets.

• About 400,000 investors lost money in the limited partnership scheme, at the time the largest fraud the SEC had uncovered.
• Regulators from 30 states imposed a $35 million fine over churning, in which agents replaced older cash-value policies to earn fresh commissions.
• In 2010 military families sued over retained asset accounts that paid 0.5 percent while Prudential earned up to 4.2 percent on the money; earlier similar suits had been dismissed.
• In August 2004 the Newark headquarters was fortified with concrete barriers and X-ray machines after terrorist threats were discovered.
• In 2026 its Japanese life insurance unit suspended new sales for nearly a year after a misconduct probe, at an estimated cost of over half a billion dollars.