Prudential Financial Faces Claims It Pilfered Annuity Product

Prudential Financial Inc. failed to brush off claims that it misappropriated trade secrets involving an annuity product, the Southern District of Ohio said.

Novus Group LLC may proceed with claims that Prudential pilfered Novus’s Transitions Beneficiary Income Rider, designed to provide death benefits in an annuity product for retirement accounts, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio said.

Novus alleges that it pitched the TBIR plan in 2014 to Nationwide Life Insurance Co., which chose not to use it as part of its annuity product portfolio.

In the following two years, two Nationwide employees, Rodney Branch and ...