Articles Tagged with short term life insurance

This week, Prudential Financial Inc. (PRU) announced that is no longer distributing certain term life insurance policies, including its My Term product, through Wells Fargo’s (WFC) retail bank. The decision comes after Prudential employees filed a complaint claiming they were let go because they reported certain sales practices related to insurance policies. The insurer says it intends to probe the “full extent of abuses” that may have resulted from the Wells Fargo-related transactions. Prudential sold about 15,000 My Term accounts through the bank.

The employee lawsuit is Julie Han Broderick et al v. The Prudential Insurance Co. of America et al. The three plaintiffs, which include Han Broderick, Thomas Schreck, and Darron Smith, are seeking unspecified damages for wrongful termination. Prudential, however, claims that the reasons they were let go have nothing to do with its business with Wells Fargo but, rather, were related to an ethics complaint.

According to the NY Times, the ex-employees filed their complaint against Prudential and a regulatory officer, contending the following:

• They were let go as retaliation for their whistleblowing activities involving Wells Fargo’s allegedly fraudulent practices around the sales of My Term insurance policies
• The plaintiffs (formerly supervisors in Prudential’s investigative division of its legal department) believe the purported fraud was due to Wells Fargo cross-selling programs
• They were fired because they would not take part in PRudential’s alleged cover-up of fraudulent and unlawful business practices it engages in with Wells Fargo Bank

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