Prudential

Prudential is a British life insurance and financial services company headquartered in London, UK, founded in London in May 1848.

In August 2017, it was announced that Prudential was set to embrace vertical integration as it planned to merge its asset manager M&G with its wider UK and Europe business. The new business was called M&G Prudential, and would manage more than £332bn of assets as it stands. The firm was looking to generate a £250m cash injection from shareholders for investment, and was expecting to make £145m a year cost savings by 2022. It was also announced that Prudential UK and Europe chief executive John Foley was lead the new business.

In the same month, Money Marketing reported that Prudential was resuming its adviser recruitment drive with plans to hire up to 30 new advisers by the end of 2017. Advice arm Prudential Financial Planning began in 2012 with 20 advisers. By 2015 it had 210 advisers, and the firm announced it was targeting a further 40 with a hiring campaign. In August 2017 Prudential had around 300 restricted advisers, putting in roughly 11th place by size, in line with the likes of Wesleyan Financial Services and bigger than the On-Line Partnership and legacy Caerus network.

By November 2017 Prudential was sounding out potential buyers as it prepared a four-way break-up of its £10bn annuity book in the UK, according to reports. The insurance giant told buyers that four chunks of annuity book valued at between £2bn and £3bn each will be offered.

Capita was replaced as the pensions administrator of M&G Prudential after an open market tender in January 2018. The administration of more than four million life and pensions contracts at M&G Prudential will move from Capita to Diligenta, an FCA-regulated subsidiary of Tata Consultancy Services on 31 July 2018.