Prudential Financial announces leadership succession for Assurance IQ
Allison Arzeno will succeed Michael Rowell as CEO of Assurance IQ, a wholly owned subsidiary of Prudential Financial, Inc., effective immediately. Arzeno will report to Andy Sullivan, executive vice president and head of Prudential’s U.S. Businesses.
Rowell, co-founder of Assurance, will transition to serve as a strategic advisor to Sullivan, where his expertise and strategic counsel will add value as Prudential delivers financial solutions to more customers across the socioeconomic spectrum. Mike Paulus, co-founder of Assurance, will step away from his role. During his five-year tenure at Assurance, Paulus was instrumental in developing and expanding the platform and driving growth for the company.
Arzeno joined Assurance in 2017 as chief data scientist, following a career spent as an executive, an advisor and in academia using advanced analytics and modeling to find new ways to improve health care and help people address their most important personal finance challenges.
“Allison is a superb combination of data scientist and business leader. She was instrumental in the building of Assurance’s innovative business model alongside Rowell and Paulus and has done an exceptional job scaling the business in her role as president,” said Sullivan. “We are confident that under Allison’s leadership, Assurance will continue to make strides in its mission to protect and improve people’s personal and financial health,” added Rowell.
“We are deeply proud of what Assurance has achieved in such a short amount of time. Allison has been a leader since the beginning and continuously exceeded expectations. I know we are leaving the company in very capable hands,” said Paulus.
Assurance was acquired by Prudential in October 2019. Since its inception, Assurance has seen more than 77 million shoppers through more than 343 million visitor sessions. Together, the leadership teams continue to leverage the combination of Prudential’s strong brand and Assurance’s direct-to-consumer reach.
Prudential buys Assurance IQ for $2.35 billion in new tech bet
(Reuters) – Prudential Financial Inc is set to buy online insurance startup Assurance IQ Inc for $2.35 billion, the latest in a series of moves by traditional insurers to up investment in technology and data crunching by buying Silicon Valley startups.
Shares of Prudential, which have struggled in the year since Charles Lowrey took over as chief executive officer, rose 3% in morning trade on the news of the deal. They fell 21% in August after poorer-than-expected quarterly results.
Labelled “insuretech”, Assurance and peers such as California-based Health IQ and Clover Health have drawn eyes over the past year with disruptive models that use data crunching and artificial intelligence to boost revenue and cut costs.
Andrew Sullivan, who heads Prudential’s retirement and group insurance businesses, said in a call with analysts that Assurance brought with it 17 million customers in need of insurance.
“We know that there are large middle market and mass affluent customer segments that have been traditionally underserved.”
Assurance will add a new earning stream to Prudential that is not sensitive to equity markets, interest rates and credit, he said.
The deal is part of a broader trend of large insurers increasingly betting big on new-age, Silicon Valley startups that are starting to disrupt the traditional insurance space.
Marquee tech investors SoftBank Group Corp and Andreessen Horowitz have poured large amounts of capital into insuretech over the past 12-18 months, expecting valuations to surge as interest from the sector’s big players grows.
Health IQ, which started selling policies in 2016, raised $55 million from Andreessen Horowitz and other investors earlier this year, valuing it at $450 million.
Continue Reading