Prudential bought one estate agency office for £200,000 and later sold it for £1
The insurer famous for the 'Man from the Pru' began in Hatton Garden in 1848 lending money to working people. Its history since includes penny-a-week policies, a disastrous dash into house selling, an internet bank and a pivot so complete that most of its head office now sits in Hong Kong.
Founded in May 1848, the company started selling Industrial Branch policies in 1854: cheap cover for working-class households, with premiums from a penny a week gathered by agents going door to door. Those collectors became so familiar that the firm was simply the Pru. In 1879 it moved into Holborn Bars, an Alfred Waterhouse building faced in terracotta from Gibbs and Canning of Tamworth, the same pairing behind the Natural History Museum. It became a limited company in 1881 and joined the London Stock Exchange in 1924.
Deregulation in the mid-1980s let financial firms own estate agents, and Prudential dived in, starting with a £12 million purchase of Ekins, Dilley and Handley in 1985 and racing to become the biggest chain by office count. It paid £125 million for 337 branches, averaging £371,000 each when a new one typically cost £75,000 to £100,000. Then the southern housing market collapsed in 1989. The property arm lost £23 million in the first half of 1990, hundreds of branches shut, and in May 1991 the rest went for £13.5 million, a 90% loss. The Hanwell office went to Rolfe East for a single pound.
Other bets fared better or at least differently. Prudential bought the American insurer Jackson National Life in 1986, Scottish Amicable for £1.75 bn in 1997 and the fund manager M&G in 1999. Its internet bank Egg, launched in 1998, gathered 550,000 customers in nine months but struggled for profit and was sold to Citibank in January 2007. A roughly £23 billion move for AIG's Asian arm AIA collapsed in 2010.
The group then shrank toward Asia and Africa. M&GPrudential was demerged in October 2019 and Jackson in 2021. Asian roots go back to an Indian agency in 1923, and in 2000 it became the first UK company to restart a life business in mainland China. By March 2022, 60 percent of head office staff worked in Hong Kong and fewer than 200 in London. Closer to home, it was the first title sponsor of the RideLondon cycling festival from 2013 until 2020.
Source: Prudential plc
