Prudential Group Insurance announces leadership changes, underscores focus on Financial Wellness strategy

Leston Welsh has been promoted to head of Products for Prudential Group Insurance. Prudential Group Insurance is a unit of Prudential Financial, Inc. (((PRU).

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Leston Welsh, head of Products for Prudential Group Insurance

In his new role, Welsh will be responsible for Prudential's Group Life, Servicemembers' Group Life Insurance (SGLI), Disability and Voluntary products.

Welsh joined Prudential in May 2018 as vice president, head of Disability and Absence Management. He was previously at Unum where most recently he served as senior vice president and chief operating officer of Starmount Insurance Company, accountable for IT, claims, call centers, enrollment, billing, implementation, account management and compliance across the individual life and dental/vision business segments.

"It is my great pleasure to promote Leston into this new role," Jamie Kalamarides, president of Prudential Group Insurance, said. "Over the past 14 months, he has successfully led the strategic direction for disability and absence management products, services and capabilities. I look forward to his leadership in this new role, which will bring us one step closer to achieving Prudential Group Insurance's Financial Wellness strategy."

Prudential's Alice Cotti will succeed Welsh and become vice president, head of Disability Product.

"I'm thrilled Alice will be taking over Disability Product," Welsh said. "In this role, she will retain her leadership over our Disability strategic initiative, aligning the transformation of the platform with the overall management of it."

As part of these leadership changes, Jim Gemus will take on a new role: head of Financial Wellness and Business Segments, including Prudential Benefit Funding and Associations.

The creation of this new role will help Group Insurance continue to unlock the value of Financial Wellness for employers and employees.

The new roles will be effective August 5, 2019. In her new role, Cotti will report to Welsh. Welsh and Gemus will report to Kalamarides.

"These moves are part of Prudential Group Insurance's long-term succession planning efforts. Having Jim take on this new responsibility for coordinating across Prudential to bring our leading Financial Wellness thinking and capabilities to our customers and their beneficiaries reinforces the key role Financial Wellness plays not only in our Group Insurance strategy, but enterprise-wide across Prudential," Kalamarides concluded. "The key drivers of our Group Insurance strategy remain unchanged."

About Prudential Group Insurance

Prudential Group Insurance manufactures and distributes a full range of group life, long-term and short-term disability and corporate and trust-owned life insurance in the U.S. to institutional clients primarily for use within employee and membership benefit plans. The business also sells critical illness, accidental death and dismemberment and other ancillary coverages. In addition, the business provides plan administrative services in connection with its insurance coverages, and administrative services for employee paid and unpaid leave, including FMLA, ADA and PFL.

About Prudential Financial, Inc.

Prudential Financial, Inc. (((PRU), a financial services leader with more than $1 trillion of assets under management as of March 31, 2019, has operations in the United States, Asia, Europe, and Latin America. Prudential's diverse and talented employees are committed to helping individual and institutional customers grow and protect their wealth through a variety of products and services, including life insurance, annuities, retirement-related services, mutual funds and investment management. In the U.S., Prudential's iconic Rock symbol has stood for strength, stability, expertise and innovation for more than a century. For more information, please visit news.prudential.com.

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