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How long will you live?
Today everybody expects to live longer. But the man who can give the best longevity estimate, at least for one out of every five Americans, is Carrol Meteer Shanks, president of the Prudential Insurance Co. of America, which has 33.2 million carefully analyzed policyholders. By charting a man's age, background, diseases, job, habits, even his morals, the Pru can chart the odds on the death age down to the last decimal. The Pru's tables show that a male policyholder aged 21 will probably live to be 73 years old, one aged 30 will live to 74, one 45 can expect to live to 75. It also knows that its women policyholders live three years longer than the men it insures.
The Pru, of course, also knows what odds to expect on its president, who turns out to be the perfect risk. At 58, with a trim 175 Ibs. spread over his 5-ft.-10-in. frame. Shanks is lean and rosily healthy. As insurance pamphlets advise, he likes to get eight hours' rest most nights—10 p.m. to 6 a.m. He does an hour's calisthenics before eating a sensibly big breakfast. Trlis other meals are light; he tries to keep lunch within 300 calories and dinner within 700. He does not smoke, rarely drinks, and has few financial worries. His salary is $250,000 a year—more than any other life insurance executive. He is a family man, a good Methodist, and thriftily drives a well-weathered 1948 Cadillac. According to the Pru's actuarial tables. Policyholder Shanks has a good chance of living to be 77. When he dies, he will have the satisfaction of leaving his family secure. At a cost of $27,000 in premiums annually, something that keeps him "insurance poor," Shanks will leave his heirs policies totaling $450,000.
Gibraltar into Volcano. But if Policyholder Shanks is as predictable as the dawn, Prudential President Shanks is not. In the insurance industry, he has erupted with such force, in the pursuit of new ways to sell insurance and new ways to invest the Pru's billions, that he has turned the Rock of Gibraltar, the company's famed trademark, into something resembling a volcano. By dint of his ideas and exertions, Shanks has not only become one of the most respected spokesmen for U.S. life insurance, but has also made the Pru, whose head offices are in Newark, N.J., the fastest-growing company in a rapidly expanding industry. In the last 30 years the U.S. life insurance industry has more than doubled its policyholders, quadrupled its insurance in force, and nearly quadrupled its assets.
Last week, with 1956's figures all in, President Shanks announced that the Prudential had passed its biggest rival. Metropolitan Life, as the world's No. 1 seller of life insurance. In 1956 the Pru sold $8.2 billion worth of new insurance, now has a total of $58 billion worth of insurance in force. With assets of $13.3 billion, it ranks as the world's third largest company of any kind.*
All told, with life insurance policies for five out of every eight Americans, the U.S. insurance companies this year will see their assets push past $100 billion—three times the funds of U.S. savings banks, more money than the gross national product of West Germany, France and The Netherlands combined. Total life insurance in force: $415 billion.