The Current State of Asset Management and the ‘New Normal'
PGIM CEO, David Hunt, joins Scarlet Fu and industry peers for Bloomberg Invest 2020. During the virtual briefing, Hunt discusses the challenges and opportunities posed by a rapidly changing investment landscape, including the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on global markets and the current state of the asset management industry.
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[DESCRIPTION: Opening screen, video call with the screen split into quarters with Scarlet Fu interviewing PGIM President and CEO David Hunt while in the other segments are industry peers. Scarlet Fu begins the conversation. In the top right corner "Bloomberg Invest Talks" is watermarked and remains throughout the video.]
[AUDIO: Okay, let's get a sense of your views on the overall state of the asset management industry, because the most overused phrase right now is "the new normal." I hear it applied to everything. I like to call it the Bizzaro World because up is down. Left is right, and there is temptation to apply that lens everything that we see, including the asset management industry. David, let me start with you here. What do you think people get wrong when they look at the asset management industry in this current environment? What are some of the misperceptions out there?]
[DESCRIPTION: David Hunt begins to answer the question posed by Scarlet Fu. David Hunt's image is now full screen, with a residential home setting behind him. In the upper left corner is written "New York, NY" and at the bottom of the screen is written "David Hunt, President and CEO, PGIM". "Licensed to Prudential Fincial/ PGIM" fades in at the bottom of the screen, then fades out and is replaced by "For display until 04 December 2020 on company website and Corporate Social Media Platforms only" which then fades out.]
[AUDIO: So, I think it's a great question, Scarlet, and so many times, when we go through one of these fast changes, there's a very human tendency, I think, to extrapolate from this particular situation and assume that the new normal will be fundamentally changed. And of course, we know from the GFC, we know from 911, that the world does change, and it will so this time, but maybe not in the ways that people think and maybe not as dramatically as people think. Let me give you the best example. I continue to hear people say, "Well, we'll just work from home." This has worked incredibly well. One of the great surprises of the asset management industry is with clients at home, all of us at home, our vendors at home, this has actually worked. And so, there's the natural extrapolation to say, well, maybe this is an industry where we can actually be at home. I would say that's not true. It's certainly an industry where we can have more flexibility, where more people can work in a more flexible environment, but culture is at the core of our talent-based business, and culture requires people to be together, both to take in new members and to extend the culture more broadly. And secondly, we're an environment that requires creativity, and creativity is tough over Zoom. It can happen a little bit, but you need to be in an environment with the give-and-take, the back-and-forth, to really generate good ideas.]
[DESCRIPTION: David Hunt's title and location are now removed from the screen]
[AUDIO: So, while I hear all the calls for staying at home, and we will have more of that, fundamentally, our culture-driven, creative environment will need to come back.][DESCRIPTION: The screen fades to black to close the video.]