How AI is revolutionizing Prudential Advisors’ referrals business

How AI is revolutionizing Prudential Advisors’ referrals business
Mike Klein
“Everyone's looking for these ways that AI can help,” Mike Klein, Prudential Advisors’ chief marketing officer.
MAY 19, 2026

Prudential Advisors is using AI technology to trawl through vast amounts of historic data and provide its advisors with information carefully crafted to the needs of each client.

“Everyone's looking for these ways that AI can help,” Mike Klein, Prudential Advisors’ chief marketing officer, told InvestmentNews. “For Prudential Advisors, one of the things we're using AI for is around our referrals and leads program.”

Prudential Advisors is the wealth management arm of insurance giant Prudential.

Klein explained that Prudental Advisors is using AI to work through literally “millions” of proprietary leads that the company has in its systems. “It might be past life insurance clients that we've had over the past 150 years - it might be employees of some of our largest institutional clients,” he said. “AI can help us enrich the information about who these people are.”

This means that when an advisor reaches out to a client, rather than just knowing that they purchased a certain product from the company 20 years ago, they are armed with much more data that is relevant to the person. “AI can help,” Klein said. “So when you talk to them, you can connect and you can build a relationship and you can uncover additional opportunities that they might be interested in.”

“AI technology is huge,” he added. “It's starting to revolutionize how we do business, it’s starting to revolutionize the efficiency.”

But he acknowledges that it's still relatively early days in the AI revolution. "I really think we're at the tip of the iceberg,” he said.

Prudential Advisors is certainly not alone in riding the AI wave. Last month at Osaic’s 2026 NXT conference in Boston, CEO Jamie Price said that two of the company’s AI tools have enjoyed the fastest-ever takeup among its giant network of broker-dealers and registered investment advisors.

Elsewhere, Raymond James recently extended its efforts in AI with the launch of an AI Academy for the company’s army of advisors, while Franklin Templeton has described its push to tap into internal talent through hackathons and AI champions.

Klein told InvestmentNews that Prudential has been integrating AI into many parts of its business, such as underwriting, for years. And he also acknowledged the importance of both internal and external expertise when it comes to deploying AI. “We're being very intentional about bringing on vendors and getting help externally,” he said. “We know we can't do this all ourselves.”

Internally, there is a central head of AI for Prudential, who is in charge of pulling the company’s AI push together and helping drive efficiency. “You don't want to be behind the eight ball,” said Klein. “You want to make sure that you're at least with the curve or ahead of the curve.”

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