Newark-based Prudential Group Insurance, a unit of Prudential Financial, announced Monday it has named Leston Welsh to head of products.
In this role, Welsh will be responsible for Prudential’s Group Life, Servicemembers’ Group Life Insurance, Disability, and Voluntary products.
Welsh joined the company in 2018 as vice president, head of disability and absence management. He was previously at Unum where he served as senior vice president and chief operating officer of Starmount Insurance Co.
“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 also announced Alice Cotti will be succeeding Welsh and has been named 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 changes, the company said, Jim Gemus will also take on a new role as head of financial wellness and business segments, including Prudential Benefit Funding and Associations.
All three new roles will be effective Aug. 5.
“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 said. “The key drivers of our Group Insurance strategy remain unchanged.”
