Tim Schmidt, chief investment officer of Prudential Financial, is retiring after 16 years with the firm and a 43-year insurance career that started at MetLife. Matthew Armas, global co-head of insurance at Goldman Sachs Asset Management, will become CIO at Prudential on March 12.
Armas, a former Lieutenant in the U.S. Navy, advised insurance company clients of Goldman on their portfolios, including investments in private and public markets. After joining Goldman in 2004 as a high-yield investment analyst, Armas rose through the ranks, including as global head of fixed income portfolio management in the insurance group before his most recent role. “We congratulate Matt on his new role,” said a GSAM spokeswoman, “and are excited to have him become a client of Goldman Sachs.”
Schmidt has a long history of investment innovation in an industry that is highly regulated to protect individuals and companies that depend on life insurance, annuities, property and casualty, and other policies. Insurance portfolios need to be stable to withstand downturns, while also generating sufficient returns. To that end, Schmidt created the first team to provide financing for large real estate investments by leveraging features from commercial mortgage lending and private credit. In the mid-1990s, just as products such as mortgage-backed securities were about to become ubiquitous, Schmidt led the development of an asset-backed investment group.
Schmidt recently told Institutional Investor that he has a passion for the impact that insurance products have on people’s lives — and what it takes to make good on these promises. Portfolios need to weather the ups and downs of interest rates, global markets, and the economy.
Before Prudential, Schmidt spent 25 years at MetLife, where he started as a private placement credit analyst and ended his tenure at the insurance company as chief financial officer.
In 2024, II presented Schmidt with its Allocator Lifetime Achievement Award, recognizing his contributions in building portfolio management organizations for two of the largest insurance companies in the U.S.
In an interview with II in 2022, Schmidt recalled a senior executive at his first job asking him what he wanted to know about insurance. It was 1983 and interest rates, which were then in the high teens, were just starting their long multi-decade decline. Knowing little about the industry — it was his first or second day after all — 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 might now have a lot of advice to offer on how to thrive in such an environment.
