Insurance, insurtech, and the architecture 211
In the three and one-half years after World War II, Prudential’s real
estate portfolio more than doubled, from $967 million at the start
of 1946 to more than $2 billion by late 1949. In the single year 1950,
Prudential made an eye-popping $1.38 billion worth of mortgage loans
and property purchases. Total realty investment would surpass $7 billion by the close of the 1950s.
(Hanchett 2000, p. 315)
In the immediate post-war period, PIC had begun to invest in property
development, but most of its real estate business remained concentrated in
single-family mortgages (Hanchett 2000). Mortgage lending might seem a
distant influence on the shape of cities but for companies that were lending
at the scale of PIC, and its close competitor Metropolitan Life, lending policies had a disproportionate effect. The PIC, as Hanchett (2000) explains,
did not lend in all residential districts and regarded older houses in older
neighbourhoods as a greater financial risk. These restrictions;
boded ill for American cities. When the nation’s biggest mortgage
maker set a policy against loans in older neighborhoods—a policy
almost certainly emulated by smaller financial institutions cautiously
following the giant’s lead—it could became [sic] a self-fulfilling prophesy. Henceforth, even people who wished to buy older homes in the city
would find it difficult to get mortgages.
(Hanchett 2000, p. 317)
The influence this had on uneven development within metropolitan areas
was substantial. Together with home insurance underwriting, it created a
redlined bias towards the development of suburban and white neighbourhoods and against inner-city and minority communities (Squires & Velez
1987) 6 . Even so, this was far from the limits of PIC’s reach.
In his 2009 dissertation, Elihu Rubin, likens twentieth century insurance
to an octopus, a metaphor he borrows from Frank Norris’s eponymous
novel tracking the influence of railways on nineteenth century America. PIC
and Metropolitan Life were two of the three largest companies in the world
in 1964 and like Prudential UK, they were both founded on the weekly collection model with agents calling at ‘every street, every door’ (Lloyd George,
quoted in McFall 2014): ‘[l]ike the tentacles of an octopus, Prudential
insinuated itself into the social fabric of the city on a door-to-door basis’
(Rubin 2009, p. 8).
The metaphor is apt. In the United Kingdom, the economic, social, and
political heft of the Prudential meant it was infrastructurally entangled
in the establishment of city institutions, influencing the terms of overseas
trade, administering the United Kingdom’s first universal healthcare payment system, partially funding two world wars, etc. In the United States, this
influence also played out in the field of urban renewal with PIC’s decision
In the three and one-half years after World War II, Prudential’s real
estate portfolio more than doubled, from $967 million at the start
of 1946 to more than $2 billion by late 1949. In the single year 1950,
Prudential made an eye-popping $1.38 billion worth of mortgage loans
and property purchases. Total realty investment would surpass $7 billion by the close of the 1950s.
(Hanchett 2000, p. 315)
In the immediate post-war period, PIC had begun to invest in property
development, but most of its real estate business remained concentrated in
single-family mortgages (Hanchett 2000). Mortgage lending might seem a
distant influence on the shape of cities but for companies that were lending
at the scale of PIC, and its close competitor Metropolitan Life, lending policies had a disproportionate effect. The PIC, as Hanchett (2000) explains,
did not lend in all residential districts and regarded older houses in older
neighbourhoods as a greater financial risk. These restrictions;
boded ill for American cities. When the nation’s biggest mortgage
maker set a policy against loans in older neighborhoods—a policy
almost certainly emulated by smaller financial institutions cautiously
following the giant’s lead—it could became [sic] a self-fulfilling prophesy. Henceforth, even people who wished to buy older homes in the city
would find it difficult to get mortgages.
(Hanchett 2000, p. 317)
The influence this had on uneven development within metropolitan areas
was substantial. Together with home insurance underwriting, it created a
redlined bias towards the development of suburban and white neighbourhoods and against inner-city and minority communities (Squires & Velez
1987) 6 . Even so, this was far from the limits of PIC’s reach.
In his 2009 dissertation, Elihu Rubin, likens twentieth century insurance
to an octopus, a metaphor he borrows from Frank Norris’s eponymous
novel tracking the influence of railways on nineteenth century America. PIC
and Metropolitan Life were two of the three largest companies in the world
in 1964 and like Prudential UK, they were both founded on the weekly collection model with agents calling at ‘every street, every door’ (Lloyd George,
quoted in McFall 2014): ‘[l]ike the tentacles of an octopus, Prudential
insinuated itself into the social fabric of the city on a door-to-door basis’
(Rubin 2009, p. 8).
The metaphor is apt. In the United Kingdom, the economic, social, and
political heft of the Prudential meant it was infrastructurally entangled
in the establishment of city institutions, influencing the terms of overseas
trade, administering the United Kingdom’s first universal healthcare payment system, partially funding two world wars, etc. In the United States, this
influence also played out in the field of urban renewal with PIC’s decision