MassMutual CEO Roger Crandall On The ‘Largest Economic Reset In History’

With inflation lingering, interest rates in flux, and geopolitical tensions rattling investor confidence, today’s financial landscape is anything but stable.

“We are going through one of the largest economic resets in history,” says Roger Crandall, chairman, president and CEO of MassMutual, and now also Chair of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.

Add in a historic $84 trillion wealth transfer from baby boomers to younger generations, and the stakes for sound financial planning are higher than ever. “There has never been a better time—and more importantly, a greater need—for financial advisors,” Crandall says. Yet just as demand for trusted guidance surges, the industry is facing a shortage of advisors to meet it.

MassMutual is tackling this disconnect head-on. Under Crandall’s leadership, the 174-year-old mutual company has invested heavily in technology, advisor development, and long-term strategies—moves rooted in a simple but powerful advantage: “We don’t answer to Wall Street. We answer to our policy owners.”

In this far-ranging conversation, Crandall discusses MassMutual’s strategic bets, the human value of financial advice, and the key trends he’s watching from his seat at the Boston Fed.

MassMutual has continued to grow and evolve under your leadership. What strategic decisions have been most critical to the company’s success, and how are you positioning it for the future?

I’ll start with a decision that we continue to make, and one that sets the stage for the rest to follow. And that is our decision to stay true to our roots as a mutual company. In essence, we are owned and operated for the benefit of our policy owners. It’s much like a cooperative—which are some of the longest-lived organizations in the world—where customers or members share in the success of the company.

That means we don’t answer to shareholders. We don’t answer to Wall Street. We don’t answer to analysts. Rather, we have one set of constituents—our policy owners—and we spend all of our time and attention thinking about how to best serve them.

That gives us the freedom to think about our business in a long-term way—and I mean very long term. More than 100,000 of our policy owners have been with us for 50 years or more, including the owner of our oldest policy. She’s had her policy with us for more than 93 years, purchased in the midst of the Great Depression.

In some ways, it’s hard to wrap your head around that but it also sums up what MassMutual is all about. When you have customers like that relying on you for decades, there’s a clear alignment of interests that emerges over time. In essence, our success becomes their success.

That mindset has led us to make a number of decisions over the past decade which have led us to our current position of strength— whether it’s investing in our advisor force to reach more people and serve them better, leveraging our asset management capabilities to deliver strong investment performance and pay a better dividend to them, or using technology, data and analytics to make the insurance-buying process faster, easier and less evasive while also helping them lead longer, healthier lives.

So, when we sit down as a management team to map out where we want to go, every decision we make is done through the lens of how we can bring new policy owners into the company and deliver even more value to them.

You’ve spent more than three decades at MassMutual, working your way up to CEO. What were the most defining moments in your leadership journey?

 Two come to mind. The first was the Great Financial Crisis in 2007 and 2008, when I served as MassMutual’s chief investment officer. While every financial services company—including us—faced challenges and were impacted to some degree, it was a wakeup call for people on the importance of working with a company that looked beyond the next quarter or two.

Our customers never had to worry that MassMutual would be the next big name to fall—we weren’t—or that we’d be lining up to take federal bailout money—we didn’t—or not able to pay claims or deliver on our commitments—we did. I remember we even had retired employees and agents calling us to ask us if their pension was safe. It was, of course, but that gives you a sense of the unease and fear people felt.

Looking back, I think it was a defining moment for MassMutual. Not every decision we made worked out, but we got the important ones right. We grew surplus, a key indicator of our financial strength, as well as sales of our core product, whole life insurance during the crisis. And as we came out of it, we took off as a market leader thanks in part to our diversified mix of businesses that helped us endure a period of historically low interest rates.

I think the biggest lesson coming out of that is maintaining a long-term perspective and staying grounded in who you are—know who and what is most important to you—while also being ready to pivot when things change. Because they will, and more quickly than you could ever expect.

That brings me to my next moment, which is Covid-19 in 2020. In some ways, those early days were just as chaotic. First and foremost, we had to prioritize the health and well-being of our employees. That March, we announced on a Thursday that we would start working from home on Monday—so we had to quickly get people set up for a whole new way of working. It tested our agility at a whole new level, and we delivered.

That year, we grew sales and earnings, maintained our financial strength, and announced a major acquisition and divesture. Even more importantly, we never lost sight of the gravity of what everyone was dealing with. More than one million Americans lost their lives. Included in that were our policy owners, as well as loved ones of our employees and financial professionals. We all knew someone who was affected.

From that, I think the big lesson is to lead with empathy and understanding. In some ways, the pandemic actually played to our strengths as a mutual. At our core, we’ve always been a company of people helping people. That informed our response – from constantly communicating with our people and giving them expanded counseling resources and generous time off for Covid needs, to quickly rolling out a free life insurance program for front-line health care workers.

When you do that, people recognize and respond to it, and I’m incredibly proud of the resiliency we showed and the results our employees delivered during that period.

The financial services industry is undergoing significant shifts, from the Great Wealth Transfer to a shortage of financial advisors. How do you view these challenges, and what role does MassMutual play in addressing them?

We’re at a critical, transformational time in our industry. The complexity and uncertainty of today’s economy, plus the sheer size of the generational wealth transfer now underway, means more Americans face big decisions without a plan or anyone to help guide them.

Meanwhile, there’s an enormous protection gap in this country, with far too many families being one unexpected moment away from financial hardship. Put all that together, there has never been a better time—and more importantly, a greater need—for financial advisors, which we view as an enormous opportunity.

To get back to your earlier question, one of the best decisions we ever made was to continue investing in our network of financial professionals. For years, some in our industry felt that advisor networks were too costly and too complex. That there were better ways to distribute products. We feel the opposite. Our financial professionals, in fact, have been the engine of our growth.

When someone is sitting down to make decisions that will impact themselves, their families, and their loved ones for years, they want someone to help them make sense of it and prepare for things they may not think about. It was true in 1851 when we sold our first policy, and it’s especially true in 2025.

Now, of course the big difference between those two eras is how we’re doing it. Today, most people don’t want just a product. They want a plan, and they want it delivered with the right mix of personal guidance and technology. That’s what we continue to build at MassMutual, and that’s the role I think we play in all of this.

Because we know if we can attract passionate, dedicated people to the profession and give them the tools to be successful, we know the greater good they can have in people’s lives—whether it’s helping them endure the financial loss of a loved one, keep up their kids’ tuition payments if they become sick or disabled, or finally live the retirement they’ve dreamed about.

Beyond your role at MassMutual, you also serve as Chair of Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. What economic trends are top of mind for you right now, and how do you see them shaping the road ahead?

There is a confluence of factors right now that we haven’t seen in a very long time, perhaps ever. From a burgeoning federal deficit, to sweeping changes in trade policy, to ongoing concerns around stagflation, we are going through one of the largest economic resets in history.

It’s going to take time to see how everything plays out, and frankly years to put everything into context. For now, I’m paying close attention to how the markets react to uncertainty and how inflation and interest rate fluctuation may impact consumer spending, as well as the potential economic impact of changes in tax policy.

So, is there a lot going on? Sure. But as I always remind people, we had the Civil War less than two decades into MassMutual’s history. We lived through World War I, World War II and the Cold War. We lived through inflation of the 1970s and the commercial real estate crash of the 1980s. And, as we talked about, we’ve had things like the financial crisis and Covid pop up along the way.

If you look at the common thread through all those periods, there were opportunities to help more people and deliver, strength, stability and confidence when they needed it most. That’s what 174 years of perspective gets you.