Prudential Financial

Prudential Financial, Inc. is an American financial services company whose subsidiaries provide insurance, retirement planning, investment management, and other products and services to both retail and institutional customers throughout the United States and in over 40 other countries. In 2019, Prudential was the largest insurance provider in the United States with $815.1 billion in total assets. The company is included in the Fortune Global 500 and Fortune 500 rankings.

The use of Prudential's symbol, the Rock of Gibraltar, began after an advertising agent passed Laurel Hill, a volcanic neck, in Secaucus, New Jersey, on a train in the 1890s. The related slogans "Get a Piece of the Rock" and "Strength of Gibraltar" are also still quite widely associated with Prudential, though current advertising uses neither of these. Through the years, the symbol went through various versions, but in 1989, a simplified pictogram symbol of the Rock of Gibraltar was adopted and has been used ever since. The logotype was updated with a proprietary font in 1996. The font, Prudential Roman, was designed by Doyald Young and John March, based on the Century font family.

In fact, in Jacksonville a two-ton piece of the Rock of Gibraltar was presented to the city and placed in the lobby of the Prudential Insurance Building in 1955.

Started in Newark, New Jersey, in 1875, Prudential was originally called The Widows and Orphans Friendly Society, then the Prudential Friendly Society. It was founded by John F. Dryden, who later became a U.S. Senator. In the beginning, the company sold only one product, burial insurance. Dryden was the president of Prudential until 1912. He was succeeded by his son Forrest F. Dryden, who was the president until 1922.

A history of The Prudential Insurance Company of America up to about 1975 is the topic of the book Three Cents A Week, referring to the premium paid by early policyholders.

At the turn of the 20th century, Prudential and other large insurers reaped the bulk of their profits from industrial life insurance, or insurance sold by solicitors house-to-house in poor urban areas. For their insurance, industrial workers paid double what others paid for ordinary life insurance, and due to high lapse rates, as few as 1 in 12 policies reached maturity. Prominent lawyer and future U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis helped pass a 1907 Massachusetts law to protect workers by allowing savings banks to sell life insurance at lower rates.

In 1954, Prudential, along with Equitable Holdings, declared a policy stating they would not insure mortgages to white families in racially integrated neighborhoods. This came in the wake of blockbusting in East Palo Alto after a white family sold their home to a Black family. This decision facilitated white flight and realignment of East Palo Alto's demographics. Their policy was according to the position of U.S. government agencies like the Federal Housing Administration and the Veteran's Administration who not only refused insured mortgages to Black families, but white families in predominantly Black communities.

Prudential has evolved from a mutual insurance company (owned by its policyholders) to a joint stock company (as it was prior to 1915). It is now traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol PRU. The Prudential Stock was issued and started trading on the New York Stock Exchange on December 13, 2001.