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The Prudential Insurance Company of America is one of the largest diversified financial institutions in the world and, based on total assets, the largest insurance company in North America. Along with its primary business, insurance, the company also operates in securities, investments, residential real estate, employee benefits, home mortgages, and the corporate relocation industry. In 1999 Prudential was in the process of reorganizing as preparation for a transition to demutualization and public ownership, pending regulatory approval, in 2000.

Mutualizing and Surviving: 1910s--30s

However, control of the company became and remained a problem during Forrest Dryden's term. Its huge resources and conservative investment philosophy made Prudential's assets look appealing to potential purchasers. Tired of fending off corporate suitors and raiders, the board took its first steps to make the company mutual and sell the company to its policyholders.

Later in Forrest's tenure, World War I drained the company with its heavy claims. Then, as a result of the 1918--19 influenza pandemic, Prudential paid out over $20 million for flu-related deaths. Shortly afterward, Forrest Dryden brought scandal to the firm because of a conflict of interest he had due to certain stocks he held. By the time he resigned in 1921, company totals exceeded $5.6 billion, an increase of $3.6 billion in ten years. Corporate assets rose from $259 million in 1911 to $830 million in 1922. Edward D. Duffield became Prudential's next president.

During Duffield's term, Prudential stayed much the same. While the company innovated by offering group insurance coverage to home office staff in 1924 and started group health in 1925, the Great Depression strangled most growth. Mortgages valued at $1.5 billion in 1931 bottomed at $787 million in 1935, even though the value of policies in force grew $1.5 billion between 1930 and 1935. In 1938, when Duffield died suddenly, he left a company still tremendously successful, but no longer a leader in the industry.

Franklin D'Olier followed Duffield as president. While D'Olier recognized the problems Prudential faced with its conservative managerial corps, he never succeeded in attending to them. A larger crisis demanded his attention: Hitler's actions in Europe and the U.S. commitment to World War II. D'Olier helped organize the New York regional civil defense and later served on the Strategic Bombing Survey Commission. However, in 1942, Prudential finally converted to a mutual company, completing the process started in 1915, and, in 1928, it entered the market for major medical coverage, group credit insurance, and group insurance in multiple employer-collective bargaining units. The group sales department was the brainchild of Edmund Whittaker, an actuary who had joined the company in 1928, and who conceived of actuaries as the "engineers of insurance."---Source: fundinguniverse.com