Key insight: Combining a long-term business strategy, updated operations and regular team communication helps build successful company culture and forward movement.
Expert quote: "Insurance has been a difficult industry to modernize." — Michael Estep, Prudential
Forward look: Prepare for Prudential to continue its mission to improve customer experiences.
In an industry as old and established as insurance, Michael Estep is leading the continual effort to
With more than 22 million people covered under the company's various group life, disability and voluntary insurance benefits and
"I came in as the head of product and underwriting, really hoping to define the long-term strategy for the organization, define the operating model, and then ultimately the talent that we needed to underpin that. Then I took over as president in February of 2024," Estep said. "I enjoy having the responsibility of building and growing a company [along with] a culture to support it, so it's been a great adventure."
From expanding benefit product choices and employee- and
"I'm very proud of the culture we've built within Prudential overall, as well as within Prudential Group Insurance," he said. "We pick each other up when we're down. We mutually celebrate our success. It's not lost on me that I set the tone. I need to show up every day, leading by example and doing things the right way and treating people with respect."
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Estep spoke with EBN about the importance of tech and product evolution within business, how he keeps his team informed and aligned with company goals, the need for company leadership presence in the community, and how benefit leaders can communicate the importance of traditional benefits. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What does your long-term business strategy include?
It's all around diversification, improving the overall experience for our customers, and growth. From a diversification standpoint, we're a leader in life insurance, we're a leader in national accounts, but we also know to have a sustainable business long term, we can't just be one thing. That's what the market demands now: a full suite of products, a full suite of services. We've been focusing our efforts on improving our end-to-end infrastructure, improving our ability to serve the customer, and broadening out into products like voluntary benefits and medical stop loss.
How is technology helping with these efforts?
We invest in technology significantly … to enable our employees to service our customers at a higher rate by removing the friction that's often fraught within our processes due to outdated technology and systems.
Insurance has probably been the most difficult industry to modernize … just due to the sheer legacy nature of [our] systems. They've been around so long, and they've had so many iterations throughout the years that buying something off the shelf to replace them is almost impossible to do. But modern technology … is giving us an advantage that we just haven't had before.
Ultimately, it's about making [the experience] easy for end consumers, whether that's understanding the products that are being offered from an enrollment standpoint, or if you bought a product, how to use it. I think we've gotten a bad name as an industry because we were very difficult to deal with, whether it was using fax machines or calling in and getting bounced around. We need to make sure that experience is, one intuitive, but two, simple to navigate. That's why we've been investing a lot into our mobile capabilities as well as our portal capabilities, to make sure that connecting with us and understanding what you bought and how to use it is as seamless as possible.
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How do you stay connected to fellow leaders and your team?
One of the challenges for all companies is communicating effectively. You just can't communicate enough. My strategic leadership team is very close, and we're always trying to get as far down in the organization as we can to get a pulse of what's going on.
We have a multipronged approach to communication. We have a weekly newsletter that goes out to everybody, as well as "Ask Us Anything" sessions. I have monthly virtual open-mic sessions [with the group insurance team] that I've been doing for four years where anybody can sign up. We keep it to less than 20 people, but there's no agenda, there's open dialogue, and it really allows me to get closer to people that I wouldn't talk to on a regular basis otherwise. They can ask me questions about Prudential, about me, about the company, and I get to also ask them how they're feeling — what's good, what gives them concerns — and that's another way for me to get a really good sense of the broader employee populations.
We've also done Summers of Learning, where we've had probably six to eight different hour-long sessions on all aspects of our business. I kicked it off and walked whoever signed up for it through, first, the strategy and the key strategic priorities, why we were diversifying, and where we were going as an organization. I try to broaden as many people's knowledge base about who we are and where we're going as possible, because the more people who can connect the dots, the better off we're going to be.
How do you interact with the community, and why is this important for company leaders to do?
I've been the executive sponsor of our VetNet business resource group for the last two years. It's something that Prudential is very proud to have. While I didn't serve, both my grandfathers did serve in World War II. But just as a U.S. citizen, giving back to veterans or active service members, as well as their families, is the least we can do. It's certainly something that we're focused on as an enterprise, and it's an important endeavor for me.
We'll do deployment kits for service members going out on active deployment. We'll help with resume writing. We'll do networking events. We'll do charity fundraising. It depends on the year, but we have a very active VetNet leadership team that's always looking to have an impact, both at a larger scale, but then also within the local community.
[These efforts are] important from a number of perspectives, but mostly it brings the human element of Prudential external. We're more than just a company; we're a part of the community, we have a purpose, and that purpose extends beyond the products that we build and manufacture. We can use our reach and our brand to impact members of the community in a positive way.
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How can benefit leaders improve engagement with traditional benefits?
It's got to be a vested interest and a commitment from the employer, the carrier, and the broker or consultant. We have all the technology, we can create customized benefit communication strategies and customized enrollment strategies underpinned by modern technology, but if the employer doesn't see the value and they're not driving that, you're not going to have the necessary impact.
It also has to be a benefit communication/enrollment strategy that fits with their employee demographic makeup. You can't treat everyone the same way, you need a multifaceted approach for folks.That could be written, that could be visual with videos, but you really have to be thoughtful about the employee population that you're crafting the strategy for.
Oftentimes we wait till October, November, and that's the time where we talk about benefits, and that's just not enough. We all have things going on in our lives where we may not be fully vested in that moment to focus on it. It needs to be an ongoing effort throughout the year — that could be life insurance awareness month, disability awareness month — there are opportunistic times throughout the year where you can continue to educate people. And then post enrollment, we need to make sure that we're also investing in those portals and the experiences, so people know, oh, this is what I bought, this is how it helps me, and this is when I can use it and when I need to use it.
Why are benefits like life, disability and medical more important than ever?
[They are] the bread and butter of benefits: Life insurance, disability, paid leave programs, as well as voluntary, specifically supplemental health benefits, which really are mainstream given the rise in high-deductible health plans. At the heart of it, it's going to be those products that you're going to most likely need. We're all going to need life insurance at some point. The odds are in our favor that we're going to probably need disability insurance. And those are the products that, when you are down, you want to make sure that you've got adequate coverage and that you know how to use those benefits. We really need to focus the messaging and the knowledge around those core benefits.
