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The Prudential Insurance Company of America is a Fortune Global 500 and Fortune 500 company whose subsidiaries provide insurance, investment management, and other financial products and services to both retail and institutional customers throughout the United States and in over 30 other countries. Principal products and services provided include life insurance, annuities, mutual funds, pension- and retirement-related investments, administration and asset management, securities brokerage services, and commercial and residential real estate in many states of the U.S. It provides these products and services to individual and institutional customers through distribution networks in the financial services industry. Prudential has operations in the United States, Asia, Europe and Latin America and has organized its principal operations into the Financial Services Businesses and the Closed Block Business.

Prudential is composed of hundreds of subsidiaries and holds more than $2 trillion of life insurance. The company uses the Rock of Gibraltar as its logo.

Prudential's logo, The Rock of Gibraltar, is one of the most recognized corporate symbols in the world. The use of the rock 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. By 1985, the Rock of Gilbraltar image was changed to a lined 2D plainer version for the logo, but by 1989, the original illustration of the Rock of Gilbraltar returned.

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

Old advert of the Prudential Insurance Co. of America (1909).

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. 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. The rest lost their entire investment. Prominent lawyer and future 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. Like many corporations of its time, Prudential's record of corporate responsibility would not meet today's standards.

Prudential has evolved from a mutual insurance company (owned by its policyholders) to a joint stock company. 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. On October 16, 2007 the Fox Business Channel picked Prudential as part of its Fox50 Index.

Homeland Security secured the Prudential Headquarters in August, 2004.

On August 1, 2004, the U.S. Office of Homeland Security announced the discovery of terrorist threats against the Prudential Headquarters in Newark, New Jersey, prompting large-scale security measures such as concrete barriers and internal security changes such as X-ray machines.

On August 28, 2006, federal and state securities regulators and the Department of Justice announced parallel settlements and a total of $600 million in monetary sanctions against Prudential Securities, Inc. (now known as Prudential Equity Group ) for misconduct relating to improper market timing. In 2001 Mark Wood (Financial Figure) moved from AXA to join Prudential to become its UK and European Chief Executive until 2005, when he founded and became chief executive of Paternoster; a regulated insurance company that takes on the risks associated with companies’ final salary/defined benefit pension schemes.

On November 28, 2007, Prudential Financial board of directors elected a new CEO, John R. Strangfeld, to replace retiring Arthur F. Ryan.---Source:wikipedia.org