Prudential

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The European edition of the Fortune 500, ranking companies by revenue.

Fortune 500 Europe

Total revenue for the world’s biggest companies fell 4.8% to $31.7 trillion this year—the first decline in half a decade.

Fortune Global 500

These companies use the creative tools of capitalism—including the profit motive—to address society’s unmet needs.

CTW 2021-13-Prudential plc

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In its fast-growing markets in Asia and Africa, Prudential, the global insurer, identified a problem: climbing rates of chronic disease and a massive shortage of health care workers to treat those ailments. It also landed on a very 21st century solution. In August 2019, the company launched Pulse, its free and wildly successful super app—so far downloaded 30 million times—that uses AI, gamification, and features of the modern smartphone to engage users in managing health and improving wellness. (Offerings, which are tailored to each market with the help of local health ministries, include a symptom tracker, bit-sized health videos, and a health-assessing selfie tool). Pulse, which is available in 11 languages and 17 countries, from Nigeria to Malaysia and the Philippines, has also super-charged Prudential’s sales in those markets: In 2020, the app generated two million policies and $211 million in sales.<i></i><br />
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Change the World

This year's Fortune Global 500 generated $33.3 trillion in revenues and $2.1 trillion in profits.

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Here are the World's Most Admired Companies for 2019 as ranked in their industries. See who made the list.

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This year's Fortune Global 500 generated $27.7 trillion in revenues and $1.5 trillion in profits.

This year's Fortune Global 500 generated $27.6 trillion in revenues and $1.5 trillion in profits.

The world's 500 largest companies generated $31.2 trillion in revenues and $1.7 trillion in profits in 2014. Together, this year's Fortune Global 500 employ 65 million people worldwide and are represented by 36 countries.

Global business is back. After limping through a worldwide financial crisis and economic slowdown, the 500 largest companies ranked by revenues shattered all sorts of performance records in 2013: They racked up combined revenues of $31.1 trillion, up 2.5% from 2012, and profits soared 27% to nearly $2 trillion. China’s 95 companies (up from 89 last year) posted $5.8 trillion in revenues. The U.S. has four fewer companies on the list than last year but remains (for now) the country leader, with 128 corporations on the list—including No. 1 Wal-Mart Stores—reporting $8.6 trillion in revenues. 

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Prudential (PUK): Company Profile, Stock Price, News, Rankings

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Prudential | Fortune

Prudential (PUK): Company Profile, Stock Price, News, Rankings | Fortune

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.

CEO’s Best Job Advice: Embrace Career Change

Leadership

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. 

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

Career changes are going to occur for the vast majority of people. And so that is something that young people just need to understand. The second point I'd make is that careers are never linear. So even if you do stay in the same company, you may be get promoted, sometimes you may have lateral moves. That's all OK? Because at the end of the day, when you think about your career, you are a compilation of your experiences that you had beforehand. And when you move career or when you move into a new position, you're bringing all those experiences with you, which enables you to provide a different perspective than others might. So what I would say is that one should embrace career changes or moves within a company because those make you a a better employee over the long term because of the variety of experiences you have prudential has been around for 100 and 50 years and has seen all sorts of different global economic conditions. It has seen the Great Depression, the great recession, two pandemics and a host of other things. So we do two things in order to make sure that we are resilient and we are strong. First is we always look to our financial strength. We are an extremely strong company. We make promises for decades and clients need to understand that we will be there for them. The second point is that we don't react to any particular economic circumstance because we are looking through the cycle and we manage through cycles in order to make sure that we are resilient for the long term. When I think about resilience, I think about a number of different components. The first of which starts with talent. If you have great talent, if you have great employees, they by definition are resilient. The second component though is do they all believe in a North Star, which is our purpose? And if you have talented people that are all going in the same direction that helps with resilience, the third component is, do they understand their role in the company in fulfilling our purpose? And if you have someone that understands their role that they come in every day and they know what they're doing that will make them resilient. The fourth component is that the company itself credential needs to support our employees both in terms of obviously financial remuneration, which is table stakes, but also in terms of their health and their wellness and credentials have extraordinary benefits to support our employee, you put those four components together. And when we face something like we did in the pandemic, where we were one of the first companies to go remote. Our employees were knocking down challenges right and left. In order to support our customers, I couldn't have been more proud of the company and our employees. And to me that is the single greatest example of resilience that we have faced. Some of the biggest challenges that we face today are external and others are obviously internal. But I would say the the biggest challenge we face today is the rate of change that our customers are experiencing both in terms of their needs and their desires. So in terms of their needs, you think about the aging demographic of our customers, you think about the different needs, they have investing insurance and retirement security. But then you think about the customers and how they are demanding services, they may want them completely digitally online. We can do that, they may want it in a hybrid experience where they start digital and then talk to one of our advisors. They may just want to talk to our advisors or they may want to talk to their own advisor and we do that as well through third party distribution. And therefore, as we innovate as we change, as our customers change, we're also changing the way in which we deliver those products to our customers in terms of speed, in terms of specificity of product. And that's where A I which we've been using for a long time for 10 years and now generative A I comes into play. And as an example, if you think about one of our simplified term products, it used to take 22 days to underwrite and now it takes a few seconds. That's the kind of speed and the kind of innovation that's taking place in the world today, in our industry today. And certainly within prudential.

Yanela Frias, Chief Financial Officer, Prudential Xihao Hu, Chief Financial Officer, TD Securities Wetteny, Joseph, Chief Financial Officer, Zoetis Moderator: Sheryl Estrada, FORTUNE

Future of Finance 2024: The Evolving Role of the CFO

Conferences

Hi, everyone. Thank you all for being with us today. So traditionally, when you think of the role of the CFO, you think of maybe managing financial recordkeeping and things of that sort, but the rule has since evolved over the years to be more encompass many more things. So I wanted to get your take on how the role has evolved from your perspective. I'll start with you, Janella. Sure. Um Yeah, it's definitely evolved incredibly and, and part of it is the, the complex world we live in, but I'd say what you just mentioned, sort of the table stakes and we just spend much more time on what the strategy and the direction of the company should be execution of that strategy and making sure that we're executing appropriately operational efficiency, technology, understanding it and I implementing it throughout the organization A I. Um and, and then, you know, we're, you, we're really becoming a second spokesperson for the, for the organization, right? So you've got the CEO and then the CFO and, and in our industry highly regulated, that means you're spending time with investors, analysts, regulators, uh customers. And so like I like to say, we end up having to know everything about everything. I feel like we're talking about this topic for a long time. I think when I met you, we were talking about the future of finance and, and CFO and I was looking at one of the, um, uh, um, blueprint that we had put forth to our colleagues in finance. Uh, last year, it's called Finance blueprint. And look at four areas that, that future, uh finance person or CFO would need to do. The first one is deliver a strategic advice like J I just said, and uh and, and with the enterprise angle, so each of the CFO S for the segments have their segment views like a small home and they have a bigger home for enterprise. That's number one, number two is to build strong capabilities and tools uh for our people to deliver the stuff we need to deliver because it's much more complicated. So we need to have better tools. Number three is to provide effective challenge and effective control, which is very important as well because CFO should not be a cake watch and should not be just a rollover. When someone asks for, you know, resources, ask for investments, you should stand up to what you believe is, right? Give a, a voice at the bank. The last one is to give a rewarding experience to all of our colleagues in finance so we can grow together. And so I think those four areas represent the future of finance as CFO as well. Thank you, Whitney. Yeah, look, the danger in coming in third is that you get to agree what, what's already been said? Uh But look, I think Janella uh is correct in that you're in the middle of everything and over time and I think it's going to continue to evolve, but you're becoming a lot more like a coo because it's, it's one thing to be really engaged and involved in the set of the setting of the strategy and deploying capital. But we're operating in a world that's so dynamic that you wake up every day to something that's shifting and changing, whether it's with your customer or the markets, you're in your competition. And that means that you then have to redeploy and find opportunities to shift and move while staying focused on the main strategic objectives that you have. And so that means it's a full contact sport that you're constantly having to do that and operating like a coo whether you have a CEO in your company or not, you're wearing that hat. And so I do think there's a big stewardship responsibility that you have uh in terms of the company's assets, leading the finance function, engaging with investors and so on. But then there's this other component which is really actively engaging in how you execute that strategy and all the changes that come in. Uh So Shiha in the role of CFO uh you're always looking for ways to improve efficiency across organizations. Um What are some of the ways that you do that at TV? Yeah, I think General said earlier as well, you got to improve efficiency, improve the execution, to make everything run a little bit smoothly and hence your comment as the chief operating officer. And recently we launched a program at TD Enterprise Wide and I'm part of preservation and finance leads that and we call it C three. So it's capacity, complexity and cost. So it's essentially increase capacity, right? And reduce complexity and then save some money at the end. And so, so when you position that way, it's not always about just taking a few dollars away from the budget, it's trying to create better ways of doing things uh whether it's how you execute a project, whether just simply getting a sow approved through the process, how do we save some steps uh still have effective control, but then get the best experience to our people to get stuff done within the company and at the same time, reduce our expenses. So that's one of the things we're working on recently. Yeah, you know, we obviously every company focuses on operational e we think about it as continuous improvement, right? You constantly have to improve and keep up because we have inflation. We have all the challenges that we're dealing with. We need to continue to invest in our businesses and our growth. So it's a continuous improvement and I always talk about it as we are making a lifestyle change. We're not in a diet here. It's a lifestyle change and it's continuous improvement. And you always have like innovation in mind as well as you can just make those changes to create ideas and implement those ideas to self invests in a way. Yeah. Look, there's a never ending sort of demand on our time and our people's time to address more and more on the stewardship part of the equation, right? Uh whether you look at regulations that are coming in, uh ESG CS RD, et cetera, you can go on and on and changing shifts in the business are going to require that we and our teams are engaging to do those things. And so if you don't deliberately look for those efficiencies, then you won't have enough capacity or resource to then uh proactively engage in the business in a way again, going back to that coo mentality and that execution and actually getting out and understand what's happening customers so that you can then be able to understand what the value is and what you're doing and how you can shift uh uh sort of allocation of capital as well. So it's actually a requirement and if you don't do it, you have less and less of your time actually devoted to that part in regard to efficiencies. Where does technology come in? Is it is it an aid um in, in order to reach those goals. Um we, we're talking here about, you know, the future of finance A I things of that sort. So just wondering um maybe see how you can. Yeah, I think technology definitely plays a big role and also data played a pretty big role as well in order to execute some of the technology studies, especially A I, you got to have a good quality data and also can fetch those data much more easily. I think one of the things for banks are like we cover a lot of banks together through acquisitions. Sometimes we don't quite streamline the data piece. So right now like we're building a good foundation, hopefully we can have efficient data delivery and accurate data delivery to people so we can use those data to create more value using technology. Yeah, Cheryl I would add, you know, technology has always been an an enabler, but now it's a strategic enabler and a critical one like you just can't operate, you can't meet the customer needs, you can't provide the customer experience that is required without technology. And that's really the way it's evolved over the recent years and it's just a critical enabler. It's a competitive edge now and you know, you get your table steak done and then a little bit more so you can win over your customers and and actually make your colleague's life a little bit better as well. And it becomes a critical part of how in the context of finance and then we think about it in the context of the enterprise. But in the context of finance is just another tool that help you to be able to free your resources uh to do things that you can then be able to go out and actually ask questions. I mean, we look at a I it's a, it's a tool that can help drive productivity. But quite frankly, I always say one of the gauges I use is is my function asking as many questions of the business as the business is asking you of my function, right? And it's a sort of a loose gauge that says, how well are we uh you know, looking at what's happening on the outside? What does it mean to us on the inside in terms of the products and services that we're offering? And are we challenging the business enough? And sometimes it's not just being the recipient of a business uh sort of um case to evaluate and say yes or no to make these adjustments, actually asking the questions on what would it mean if we had this much more to invest in this area? So actually being a growth ally for innovation, ally and so being able to do that and using technology to free up. And A I is another means to ask a lot of questions by the way. And so we're gonna have to sharpen our, our, our ways of, of doing that, whether it's directly with, with each other or through the prompts that we, that we put in uh into the A I tool uh Janella, since uh technology is going to kind of, you know, change the way the finance organization functions that brings to question uh talent, you know, and when you're looking for finance talent to join an organization, are you looking for like data sciences or, or what, what is your take on that? No. Absolutely. So, first of all, you know, the way we think about talent, it's our most valuable resource. We, we don't make widgets, we don't make phones, we create financial solutions to serve the needs of uh retirement needs, protection, needs of Americans, right? So it's really all about our people. So when we think about hiring people, we're looking for athletes that can play different positions on the field. We're not, we're not hiring based on experience. We're hiring based on a skill set that then we can really attract, develop and retain over a long time. We also focus a lot on mobility. So I've worked in every US business, I've been in finance, I've run businesses within Prudential and it's that mobility and that diverse experience that allows you to be a huge value to the organization. And then when you link it to technology, um you're looking for different skill sets. So yes, we have data sciences and within finance, we have technology people, within finance and we're focusing on training our workforce to really understand technology. So an example of that is we are about to launch a three day program for our top 40 people in the organization and immersion in technology. And then over time, that will actually be rolled out throughout the entire organization. But we think it is that important for business people to understand technology as much as technology, people need to understand the business because it's, that's when we come together to really solve problems and create solutions. I feel like it's learning a foreign language. You need to have multiple foreign language in your in, in your tool kit. So like technology speaks technology language, finance speaks finance language and business speaks business language. So a good finance person can merge all three together can explain things to different parties in a very clear concise fashion and that's the finance talent that you want to have for the future. Yeah, look, I might be aging myself a little bit here, but there was a time that you had to basically sit down with a business analyst and describe what you need. And then they would go and translate that to a programmer and they would write a report for you and bring you back and do all that, right? But over, over time and more and more these powerful tools are put in our hands. And so we have to also make sure that not only we are hiring, developing our team so that they can be that much more technologically savvy to be able to interrogate, get the, get the value out of those tools. And I think more and more is going to continue to push into more power in our hands. Yeah, actually funny you, when you said that you reminded me of something when I ran the retirement business, a big part of our retirement business, you know, we model all these liabilities and we price all these liabilities and it's done by actuaries. And what we ended up finding is that if we could find actuaries that could code, they could actually create the models and they already knew what they needed the model to do. And if you took the actuarial knowledge with the coding knowledge, it was so powerful. So we used to say we need actuaries who can code. That was the, the hiring uh terminology. That's actually exactly a point. And, and the other thing is you need to find people that have that curiosity because uh when the bank first doing C car, you know, you have lots of models to run, right? And uh not everyone knows how to coding, but people on the team actually spend their own time learning how to use Python, use staff studio, self taught. So if you find curious talent, it would enhance your team's capability a lot. Sorry, I cut you off, we see the same thing. Um I wanted to ask under the purview of strategy, you know, growth strategies as a CFO, how do you manage the short term and prepare for the long term? Uh Yeah, look, I think it's um it's definitely a focus of our, in our business. It is a long cycle business, right? Uh We're a animal health company developing uh drugs that will solve the unmet needs out there. And the cycle runs, you know, seven years, give or take. And so you have to be disciplined and focused on continuing to make the investments to drive innovation based on what the customers on met needs are and, and improving the lives of animals around the world. And so then, but then you have friction in the short term that you have to address. And so I do think this goes back to the point earlier around driving efficiency and productivity, not just in finance, but across the business because that's your opportunity to be able to reallocate resources from where they are. There's always some underutilized uh asset, better utilization of your, you know, more productivity that you can drive year in and year out to then take those funds and drive them to the places that are going to drive the long term in terms of where you strategically are headed uh as, as a business. And, and if you don't do that, it might take, you know, a year or two years and our business might take longer. But you will see uh the pain from that uh come back. So you really have to remain disciplined uh in terms of making those. Yeah, we, we have a similar experience. So we are public insurance company uh that is making 30 year promises and guarantees to our, our customers. So, um it is very much a long term investment. We have to make sure we have the right amount of capital that we can withstand, you know, pandemics, you know, recessions. And then yet as a public company, there's the pressure of OK, are you paying a dividend? Are you buying back stock? Right? And it's that constant balance and you just have to have the conviction of this is what I'm investing for in the long term. And yet that may mean that I'm retaining capital that in investors and analysts may think I need to repatriate, but you have to have conviction in your strategy and in what you're investing in and that it will pay off over time, not next quarter, but over 2 to 3 years or five years. Now, we are talking about the evolving role of the CFO. Um I wonder what actually prepared you for the CFO role, you know, for people, maybe who want to take the same path. Whitney, look, I've had an opportunity to um be in a lot of different roles over the years and there was a 13 year period in one company where I had five different positions. But I think, you know, each one had an effect and impact whether it was when I was a controller or when I ran finance for business, when I went off to the UK, to live there to, to partner up with a business to, to help drive that. But one of the most impactful roles that I had was actually going out of finance for a little bit and, and I ran a business uh for, for just over three years. And that's when I, I think I always had this sort of um interest in what, uh you know, a customer sees and how do you drive value for the customer in their eyes? Right. And, and that led me to be very curious about a customer. But when you're running a business, you have no choice, right? And I remember going out in a very short time horizon, uh the 1st 90 days I went and visited 70 customers across the world. And at one point after that, I reflected on a core part of our offering, which was having project managers that would help customers, you know, sort of manage their clinical trial processes on, uh um, and, and at the time before I took the role, I was in finance, I always thought it was, it was not a profit center and we kept hiring more and more. And after meeting with our customers and seeing how the dynamics of their worlds were changing. What I realized was we needed to have more project managers that were even more experienced and they would be willing to pay for that because I could understand the value uh of that uh really in terms of their current world and where there was headed. So, uh it, it sort of changed the way I look at this and this is why I now consider myself a customer obsessed type CFO uh and, and get out to customers as often as possible. There is nothing like sitting across from a customer and hearing what their challenges are, how you need to up your game. You know, this is what you guys are not delivering, this is what you're doing well and that is very powerful and I have a very similar experience. I grew up in finance and then I went off and ran a couple of businesses and now I'm back in finance and that perspective of living the challenges of the business, having to deliver sales every day, having to solve those challenges that customers have managing expenses, dealing with the, the volatility in the marketplace that gives you an incredible background to then be the CFO and, and make decisions at the enterprise level. Yeah, for me, I, I didn't get a chance to, to, to have a customer facing which hopefully one of the, those days I'll have it. But for me, the, the learning coming from the technology and data side of the house. So I was chief auditor for about two years. One of the focus is to look at T DS technology stack and how it's paying out on a control side. Also on the delivery side for our customers, for our colleagues. The second one is uh when, when I joined the US finance for the first time, I was asked to build a data warehouse, I have no clue how to build data warehouse. I don't know what data look like. But that, that learning process changed me quite a bit and let me appreciate the importance of data. And then when you allocate capital to invest in the future, you know where the important critical part is importance of data. Well, that's our time. Thank you so much for joining us and thank you.

The key to retaining talent, says Charles Lowrey, is not more pay but “purpose”

Prudential CEO Tells How Leading with Purpose Transformed the Rock

Prudential CEO on leading with purpose

Charlie. Thank you so much for joining us. It's great to see you. Let's begin by talking about leaving with purpose because when you became the new Ceo of Prudential five years ago, you were focused on the company's purpose. How do you define purpose? And why is it so important? I love talking about purpose and our purpose is to make lives better by solving the financial challenges of a changing world. It is the reason we exist. It's the reason we do everything. That's the reason why so many of our employees work with us. And it is, it is our reason for being when you took charge, you set about to change prudential and transform the company, what did you want prudential to be? And how did purpose fit into your vision? So what we said very simply was that we wanted prudential to be a higher growth, less market sensitive and more nimble company so that we could earn our existence for the next 150 years as we've been for the past 150 years. But we have to earn that the competition was different. Our customers are changing. And so we wanted to have a strategy that made sense as we go forward for the next 150 years. Well, I understand that Prudential has changed dramatically in the past five years. The words people use to describe your company today are agile innovative technology oriented risk taker. I mean, that's not what we expect to hear from a company that's in the retirement and insurance business. Tell us more about how that all came about for a number of reasons. One, if you look at the context in which we operate, our competitive environment was changing rapidly, but more importantly, our consumers were changing. They want things when, where and how they want. And in order to provide our consumers and clients with the products and services they need, we had to change in order to serve the demographic. And it's interesting that most of these changes were done during COVID. Why did you do all of that at such a difficult and uncertain time? I mean, Prudential wasn't in trouble. It's highly ranked Fortune 500 company even back then. It's known as the Rockets Solid. It's dependable. Why did you feel an urgency to reinvent the company during COVID? Well, necessity is the mother of invention and we had to, no one thought that we would be able to go remote 50,000 people in 40 countries in 48 hours. And yet we did it. And that was a proof point for our employees that they could do more and they could do it faster. That's the first point. Second point is customers needed us during the pandemic. They were scared, they wanted to know the balances of their checking accounts or their, their investment accounts. We needed to be able to supply that quickly to them in an automated passion. We had to invent things on the fly that conserve the customers. So it was the pandemic served as an accelerant for so many of the things we needed to do. What was the reaction of your employees? Did they understand what you were doing and that these changes had to be done right now. Yes, they did because they were on the front lines. They saw that we had to serve our customers and they were actually excited. They were excited that they could do things faster and they could accomplish things. They saw the results of what they were doing on our customers and the benefits that we were able to provide our customers as a result of the changes we were making. Despite all the change and the positive stuff that you were doing, we saw during COVID that many employees left their companies, including at Prudential, went on to other companies as you watched this revolving door. What did you learn of seeing people jump from job to job? What did you learn about that? We learned two things, the importance of culture and the importance of purpose. People could jump from job to job. You're absolutely right. It became frictionless to do so because you were at home and you were a box on a, you were box on the screen and it was easy to do that. So what retains people, what retains people is that they feel meaning in what they do and they feel meaningful in helping the company. And if they do that, there's a far more likely chance that they will stay with you as opposed to just go somewhere else from everything that you learned. What in this new world of work? What do you think is the key thing that you can attract and retain employees? Is it more pay? Is it a flexible work schedule? What have you zeroed in on? It's not pay. So if, if I hire you and it's just because I'm paying you more, that's a transaction, that's nothing more than a transaction. There is no economic transaction, there's no no real relationship there. What creates the relationship of the employee to the company is purpose and culture. They need to believe that what they work they do is important and it's meaningful and it's meaningful to the company and that it relates to the purpose for which we exist. Another issue that's weighing on business leaders these days is recession. We all see the headlines every day is the economy going to go into recession. And if so how long, what's your thinking on this? I think we're seeing a tremendous wrestling match today between a stubbornly strong economy. On the one hand, frankly, one that has surprised many people. And on the other hand, a determined fed that is looking to lower inflation over time. Our belief is that we are in a very constructive economy right now. If you look globally, you see, uh you see that Europe is doing better than we thought China is doing better than we thought we've obviously hit peak inflation and that's coming down and that the economy in the U S is very strong. So we think we're going to have A sluggish outcome here eventually, but we won't necessarily go into recession. This is very important, especially for prudential because you manage more than $1 trillion dollars of clients money. How is all this fuzziness impacting the decision that you're making for your investment portfolio? So we invest for the long term for our clients. Our clients come to us for a variety of reasons. We manage assets across many different asset classes and each client has uh its own investment criteria. And we managed to those criteria, you mentioned the fed a moment ago. I mean, the fact that they're indicating that they're going to continue raising interest rates to combat inflation and they're going to stay high. That's actually a good thing for your investment portfolios, is that right? Absolutely. So higher interest rates is better for insurance company and lower interest rates, which we've been fighting for the past few years. Charlie. Let's talk about you and your path to the CEO job at Prudential. It's interesting that you started out in architecture. You went out to graduate school, you studied architecture, you taught architecture and then you even open your own architecture firm. Why did you like it so much? I loved architecture. I still love architecture, married to an architect. And so it's still a huge part of our life. I loved it because it involved art, involved science. It involved creating the built environment for people. It's just, it's a fantastic profession. So why did you change? Why did you change? What were you picturing in your new career path? Serendipity has a lot to do with, I think careers and my career is anything but, but linear. So I went back to business school because I thought I needed business experience, having run my own firm and being honestly fairly naive about running your own firm when you just straight out of graduate school. Uh and then went into business for a little while after business school thinking I'd always go back to architecture but never quite made it. So after 13 years in investment banking, prudential, who had been a client for 10 years called and said, would you like to be considered for a job at prudential? And I moved to prudential? Never would. I thought in my younger days that I'd be in business when I grew older and that you would become the ceo of a Fortune 500 company. Not in my wildest. Well, I understand that you like talking to employees at Prudential and you like to advise them and help them with their career choices. How much do you share your own personal story about going into architecture and then uh working your way into business? And is there any one piece of valuable advice that you'd like to leave with them? Yes. So I do share my story as an example of careers not being linear because I think many people think, gosh, I'm here. I want to travel on a single path and that as you well know that that doesn't happen very often. So if I give them a piece of advice, uh it's, it's twofold again, one careers won't be linear, linear. But second of all, follow your passion, follow what you really love because if you do that, you'll succeed. Well, you know, these COVID years has changed a lot of things including uh leadership. How has it changed your job as CEO? I mean, what are you doing more of and what are you doing? Less of you put on your suit and you came to work in your suit with your armor and you didn't really talk about home and business was business. The pandemic taught us a great deal about ourselves and about sharing ourselves and our vulnerabilities. So now my leadership style has changed in that one still has to be a strong leader, the CEO, but you also have to be an empathetic leader. You have to understand more about people and where they're coming from and what their situation is so that they can be as effective as employees as they can be. But also care for their own home life. And what is the reaction, tremendous change and a much deeper relationship and commitment by virtue of understanding again, other people's lives in a completely different nature than we had before following up on where we started our conversation. Tell us how leaving with purpose shape your leadership as CEO it shapes it in a number of ways, but beyond everything else, I'm the guardian of that purpose. I spend much of my days thinking about how purpose is infused in our strategy. I ask a lot of why questions. So in meetings, I'll ask, why is this product or this service helping our purpose? And if it's not, we'll throw it out maybe a good idea, but it's not consistent with our purpose of expanding access to more customers over time. And when you think about expanding access, that is a very big part of our purpose. And it's a very big part of my passion for what we do and why we do it is to expand access to more people so that they can have financial security over time.

The competition for talent has moved well beyond employers competing with one another to find the best workers. Now, as employees demand more flexibility and are driven by other non-monetary factors, managers also find themselves rethinking employee value propositions to address the new power and choices workers have. To build a resilient workforce of top talent, CEOs need to radically rethink ways of working—from embedding meaning and purpose in work, to developing opportunities for individuals to add new layers of skills, to fostering social capital within the organization to build networks and trust. Drawing on McKinsey & Company’s latest research, this session will explore what factors make employees happier, more productive, and more likely to stay–and how CEOs are driving business value by deploying a talent-first mindset. 

In partnership with McKinsey 

Moderator: Alan Murray, Chief Executive Oﬃcer, FORTUNE 

Participants: 

John Driscoll, Chief Executive Officer, CareCentrix 

David Heath, Co-founder and CEO, Bombas 

Jo Ann Jenkins, Chief Executive Officer, AARP 

Charles Lowrey, Chairman and CEO, Prudential Financial, Inc. 

Jeff Maggioncalda, Chief Executive Officer, Coursera 

Marc Rosen, Chief Executive Officer, JCPenney 

Christian Ulbrich, President and CEO, JLL 

Making the workplace work for people

Drawing on McKinsey & Company’s latest research, this session will explore what factors make employees happier, more productive, and more likely to stay.

I want to thank you all for being here today for this special ceo roundtable on the new realities of talent and the workplace and a special thanks to our partner Mckinsey and company for hosting this conversation. A good group of C. E. O. S here. I think all of you know the competitive struggle for talent is unlike anything certainly I've ever experienced. I think most of you have ever experienced before when we asked Fortune 500 ceos last month what their biggest challenge was, even though we're in the middle of a war in europe, you know, and approaching a possible recession, a redefinition of work Still, number one thing on their mind was Talyn um the the need to attract and retain good talent in the workforce. The pandemic has added this whole new dimension about where people work and when people work and how they work and even why they work. Uh and we want to talk about all that uh today, what are the uh what are the best best practices that you all have found? What are the factors that make employees happier more productive, more likely to stay with the company? Uh And and how are you as C. E. O. S. Driving business value By focusing on talent 1st. Um uh This is a this is a small group which is good. My intention is to engage all of you really want you to share your own insights and best practices. Uh If for some reason you don't want to be called on turn, turn off your camera but if your camera's on, I consider you fair game. So be prepared. Also a reminder that this conversation is on the record. Um, we will be reporting on it unfortunate. I'm planning to do something for the Ceo daily tomorrow. So, uh, if, if, if you have something to say that you don't want to be on the record, please make that very, very clear and use the chat. Um, I'm glad john driscoll has already commented on the introductory music. Uh, it's a great place for you to either ask questions or make smartass comments, whichever works for you. Um, uh, and, and I want to again, thank thank Mackenzie for setting this up, but I want to go to Bill Shannon her first. He's the guy on the screen that looks like the talk show host. He's a very good talker and he wrote a, wrote a wonderful piece on Fortune dot com uh, this morning that highlights some of the trends that uh, he has seen in Mackenzie research and I, I'd love for him to spend a couple of minutes just setting the stage for us and then we'll get into the conversation. Bill, thank you Alan and I do apologize for the gear. I can either look like I'm looks like I'm at a beta or or more plausibly the speaker and mic on my computer is not working properly. There we go. Um, yeah, you know, and it was interesting that the piece came out this morning right in terms about it, but the cycle time now on anything related on anything.

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