Institutional Investor honors Timothy Schmidt, CIO of Prudential Financial, with the 2025 Allocator Lifetime Achievement Award for his four decades of leadership and expertise in managing assets and originating investments for insurance portfolios. Schmidt is the first insurance CIO to receive II’s award.
Schmidt’s passion for the impact that insurance products have on people’s lives — and what it takes to make good on these promises — has driven him to be innovative with investments while also creating portfolios that can weather the ups and downs of interest rates and the inevitable downturns that markets will suffer. Schmidt is also a committed mentor, with four of his direct reports going on to become CIOs of insurance companies.
Schmidt, who has been with Prudential since 2010, has a long history of being early to recognize opportunities. He built and led the first investment team that provided innovative financing for large real estate investments by integrating features of both commercial mortgage lending and private credit. In the mid-1990s, just as securitized products were about to explode, he led the development of an asset-backed investment group, which at the time was still considered esoteric.
Before Prudential, Schmidt spent 25 years at MetLife, joining as a private placement credit analyst and rising to chief financial officer.
Schmidt’s legacy will include building top liability-focused portfolio management organizations for two of the largest insurance companies in the U.S. With a disciplined asset liability management framework as a stable backdrop, Schmidt can be tactical with asset allocation and invest in new asset classes and market opportunities.
In an industry that requires skillfully navigating interest rates as much as anything else, Schmidt vividly remembers a senior executive asking him in the early 1980s what he wanted to know about insurance. Interest rates, still at double-digits, were just starting their long multi-decade decline. Schmidt asked what he should worry about. “A sustained period of low interest rates is the death knell of the insurance industry,” answered the exec.
Schmidt will be honored at II’s Allocators’ Choice Awards on September 18 at the Mandarin Oriental in New York City. II will also announce the winners in eight categories, including recognition for leadership and vision in 2025. Read about the finalists in the running for the awards as well as this year's Hedge Fund Rising Stars.
