Andrew Sullivan (pictured above) has been named chairman of the board at Prudential Financial, adding the title to his role as chief executive in a consolidation of power at the top of one of America's largest insurers.
The appointment follows the resignation of Charles Lowrey, who stepped down as executive chairman and director after 25 years at the Newark, New Jersey-based company. Lowrey will stay on as a senior advisor through the end of the second quarter before retiring.
Sullivan, 54, takes the dual role at a time when Prudential Financial is in the middle of a strategic overhaul he set in motion shortly after becoming CEO.
In December, he reshuffled the company's senior leadership, pulling direct reporting lines from the heads of US operations, emerging markets, the Japan group, and PGIM, the firm's global asset management arm, closer to the corner office.
A graduate of the US Naval Academy who served as a nuclear submarine officer, Sullivan spent the early part of his career at Diamond Technology Partners and DaimlerChrysler before moving into insurance.
He held several senior positions at Cigna, where he led merger and acquisition work across health care and international operations, and later ran individual and senior business segments at CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield, corporate filings show.
He joined Prudential in 2011 and rose through a succession of leadership roles, overseeing group insurance, all US businesses, and most recently the international and investment management divisions.
Andrew Sullivan has been clear about where he wants to take the company. On Prudential Financial's third-quarter earnings call last year, he laid out three priorities: steering capital toward the most profitable growth opportunities, tightening execution, and building what he called a high-performance culture.
He struck the same notes on the fourth-quarter call, where the company reported full-year 2025 net income of US$3.576 billion, up from US$2.727 billion a year earlier.
That strategy has meant shedding parts of the business. Sullivan pointed to the sale of PGIM's Taiwan operations and an exit from Kenya's insurance market as examples of the discipline he is imposing on the portfolio. PGIM is also shifting to a unified asset manager model, targeting margins of 25% to 30%.
Not everything has gone smoothly. Prudential voluntarily suspended new sales at its Japan unit for 90 days late last year to address employee misconduct, a move the company said would dent 2026 pretax adjusted operating income by US$300 million to US$350 million.
Charles Lowrey, who served as CEO from 2018 to 2025 and chairman from 2019, steered Prudential through the pandemic and oversaw a series of derisking transactions. He called his quarter-century at the firm "an honor" and expressed confidence in Sullivan and the broader leadership team.
Michael A. Todman, lead independent director, said Sullivan's depth of experience across the business positions him to guide the company's next phase of growth.
