MetLife, Inc. (‘MetLife’) is one of the world’s leading financial services companies, providing insurance, annuities, employee benefits and asset management.
The company holds leading market positions in the United States (‘U.S.’), Asia, Latin America, Europe, and the Middle East. The company is also an institutional investor in the U.S. with a general account portfolio invested primarily in fixed income securities (corporate, structured products, municipals, government and agency), and mortgag...
MetLife, Inc. (‘MetLife’) is one of the world’s leading financial services companies, providing insurance, annuities, employee benefits and asset management.
The company holds leading market positions in the United States (‘U.S.’), Asia, Latin America, Europe, and the Middle East. The company is also an institutional investor in the U.S. with a general account portfolio invested primarily in fixed income securities (corporate, structured products, municipals, government and agency), and mortgage loans, as well as real estate, real estate joint ventures, other limited partnerships, and equity securities.
Under the company's New Frontier strategy, it intends to leverage its strengths to prioritize growth across four key areas of opportunity: extend its leadership in group benefits; capitalize on its unique retirement platform; accelerate its growth in asset management; and expand in high-growth international markets.
MetLife is organized into six segments: Group Benefits; Retirement and Income Solutions (‘RIS’); Asia; Latin America; Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (‘EMEA’); and MetLife Holdings. In addition, the company reports certain of its results of operations in Corporate & Other.
In the fourth quarter of 2024, MetLife and General Atlantic, L.P. (‘General Atlantic’) announced the formation of a life and annuity reinsurance company, Chariot Reinsurance, Ltd. (‘Chariot Re’), subject to regulatory approvals and other closing conditions.
Segments and Corporate & Other
The company offers a broad range of products and services aimed at serving the financial needs of its customers. It sells these products to corporations and other institutions (including local, state, and federal governments) and their respective employees, as well as individuals.
Group Benefits
The company has built a position in the U.S. group insurance market through long-standing relationships with many of the largest employers in the U.S.
The company's Group Benefits segment, based in the U.S., offers life insurance, dental, group short- and long-term disability, paid family and medical leave, individual disability, accidental death and dismemberment (‘AD&D’) insurance, accident & health insurance, and vision, as well as prepaid legal plans and pet insurance. The company also sells administrative services-only (‘ASO’) arrangements to some employers.
The company distributes Group Benefits products and services through a sales force that primarily comprises MetLife employees segmented by the size of the target customer. Account executives sell either directly to corporate and other group customers or through intermediaries, such as brokers or consultants. Employers have been emphasizing voluntary products, and as a result, the company has increased its focus on communicating and marketing to employees to further foster sales of those products.
The company has entered into arrangements with third parties to expand opportunities to market and distribute Group Benefits products and services. It also sells Group Benefits products and services through sponsoring associations and affinity groups and provides life, dental, accident & health, and vision coverage to certain employees of the U.S. Government. The company has longstanding relationships with these employees and continues to cultivate and expand them through additional product offerings.
Annual benefit renewal implementation, enrollment, and marketing costs normally elevate expenses for the Group Benefits segment in the fourth quarter (year ended December 2024).
Major Products
Term Life Insurance: A guaranteed benefit upon the death of the insured for a specified time period in return for the periodic payment of premiums. Term contracts expire without value at the end of the coverage period when the insured party is still living.
Variable Life Insurance: Insurance coverage through a contract that gives the policyholder flexibility in investment choices and, depending on the product, in premium payments and coverage amounts, with certain guarantees. In the separate account investment options, the policyholder bears the entire risk of the investment results.
Universal Life Insurance: Insurance coverage on the same basis as variable life, except that premiums, and the resulting accumulated balances, are allocated only to the company’s general account.
Dental: Insurance and ASO arrangements that assist employees, retirees, and their families in maintaining oral health while reducing out-of-pocket expenses.
Disability: Insurance and ASO arrangements for groups and individuals to provide benefits for income replacement, payment of business overhead expenses, or mortgage protection in the event of the disability of the insured.
Accident & Health Insurance: Accident, critical illness, or hospital indemnity coverage to the insured.
Vision: Insurance, ASO arrangements, and managed eye health and vision care solutions to assist employees, retirees, and their families in maintaining vision health while reducing out-of-pocket expenses. Offered to commercial groups, individuals, health plans, and government-sponsored programs through a nationwide provider network, retail optical chains, and online eyewear providers.
Retirement and Income Solutions
The company's RIS segment, based in the U.S., provides funding and financing solutions that help institutional customers mitigate and manage liabilities primarily associated with their employee benefit programs using a spectrum of life and annuity-based insurance and investment products.
The company distributes RIS products and services through dedicated sales teams and relationship managers that primarily comprise MetLife employees. In addition, these sales professionals work with individual, group, and global distribution areas to better reach and service customers, brokers, consultants, and other intermediaries.
Major Products
Stable Value Products
General account guaranteed interest contracts (‘GICs’) are designed to provide stable value investment options within tax-qualified defined contribution plans by offering a fixed maturity investment with a guarantee of liquidity at contract value for participant transactions.
Separate account GICs are available to defined contribution plan sponsors by offering market value returns on separate account investments with a general account guarantee.
Synthetic GICs or ‘wraps’ are contracts available only to the sponsor of a participant-directed defined contribution plan. The contract ‘wraps’ a portfolio of investments owned by the plan to provide a guarantee.
Private floating rate funding agreements are generally privately placed, unregistered investment contracts issued as general account obligations with interest credited based on a specified rate or agreed-upon short-term benchmark rate. These agreements are used for money market funds, securities lending cash collateral portfolios, and short-term investment funds.
Annuities
Pension Risk Transfers: General account and separate account annuities are offered in connection with defined benefit pension plans, which include single premium buyouts allowing for full or partial transfers of pension liabilities.
General account annuities include non-participating group contract benefits purchased for retired or active employees covered under terminating or ongoing pension plans.
Separate account annuities include both participating and non-participating group contract benefits. Participating contract benefits are purchased for retired, terminated, or active employees covered under active or terminated pension plans. The assets supporting the guaranteed benefits for each contract are held in a separate account; however, the company fully guarantees all benefit payments. Non-participating contracts have economic features similar to the company's general account product but offer the added protection of an insulated separate account. Under accounting principles generally accepted in the United States of America (‘GAAP’), these annuity contracts are treated as general account products.
Institutional Income Annuities: General account contracts that are guaranteed payout annuities purchased for employees upon retirement or termination of employment.
Structured Settlements: Customized annuities designed to serve as an alternative to a lump sum payment in a lawsuit initiated because of personal injury, wrongful death, or a workers’ compensation claim or other claim for damages. Surrenders are generally not allowed, although commutations are permitted in certain circumstances. Guaranteed payments consist of life-contingent annuities, term certain annuities, and lump sums.
Risk Solutions
Longevity Reinsurance Solutions: Longevity reinsurance is a risk mitigation solution for United Kingdom (‘U.K.’) pension plan sponsors and U.K. insurance companies that write pension risk transfer business, converting uncertain future pension benefit obligations into a fixed stream of payments to MetLife over the duration of the contract as opposed to a lump sum at inception in typical pension risk transfer transactions.
Benefit Funding Solutions: Specialized life insurance products and funding agreements designed specifically to provide solutions for funding postretirement benefits and company-, bank-, or trust-owned life insurance used to finance nonqualified benefit programs for executives.
Funded Reinsurance Solutions: Funded reinsurance is a risk mitigation tool for insurance companies that write pension risk transfer business primarily in the U.K. It provides a single-premium reinsurance solution that transfers both the longevity risk and investment risk associated with U.K. bulk pensions.
Capital Markets Investment Products
Funding agreement-backed notes are offered in medium-term note programs, under which funding agreements are issued to special-purpose trusts that issue marketable notes in the U.S. dollars or foreign currencies. The proceeds of these note issuances are used to acquire funding agreements with matching interest and maturity payment terms from certain subsidiaries of MetLife. The notes are underwritten and marketed by major investment banks’ broker-dealer operations and are sold to institutional investors.
Funding agreement-backed commercial paper is issued by a special-purpose limited liability company that deposits the proceeds under a master funding agreement issued to it by Metropolitan Life Insurance Company (‘MLIC’). The commercial paper is issued in the U.S. dollars or foreign currencies, receives the same short-term credit rating as MLIC, and is marketed by major investment banks’ broker-dealer operations.
Funding agreements are issued by certain of the company’s insurance subsidiaries to the Federal Home Loan Bank of New York (‘FHLBNY’) and to a subsidiary of the Federal Agricultural Mortgage Corporation.
Asia
The company’s Asia operations are geographically diverse, encompassing both developed and emerging markets. It operates in nine jurisdictions throughout Asia, with its largest operation in Japan. The company markets its products and services through a range of proprietary and third-party distribution channels.
In Japan, the company’s face-to-face channels, including both career and general agency, continue to be critical to its overall distribution strategy, catering to various needs of individual retail customers. Outside of Japan, the company’s distribution strategies vary by market and leverage a combination of career and general agencies, and bancassurance. In select markets, the company also uses independent brokers for retail sales and its employee sales force to sell group products.
Major Products
Life Insurance: Whole and term life, endowments, universal and variable life, as well as group life products.
Accident & Health Insurance: A full range of accident & health products, including hospitalization, cancer, critical illness, disability, income protection, and personal accident coverage.
Retirement and Savings: Fixed and variable annuities, as well as regular savings products.
Latin America
The company’s largest operations are in Mexico and Chile. It markets its products and services through a multi-channel distribution strategy that varies by geographic region and stage of market development.
The company has an exclusive and captive agency distribution network that sells a variety of individual life, accident & health, and pension products. Its direct marketing channel includes sponsors and telesales representatives selling mainly accident & health and individual life products directly to consumers. The company also works with brokers and independent agents on sales of group and individual life, accident & health, group medical, dental, and pension products, and worksite marketing. It also offers government employees life and medical insurance, as well as retirement and savings, and other products.
Major Products
Life Insurance: Whole and term life, endowments, universal and variable life, as well as group life products.
Retirement and Savings: Fixed annuities and pension products. Fixed income annuities provide for asset distribution needs. The company’s savings-oriented pension products are primarily offered in Chile under a mandatory privatized social security system.
Accident & Health Insurance: Group and individual major medical, accidental, and supplemental health products, including AD&D, hospital indemnity, medical reimbursement, and medical coverage for serious medical conditions, as well as dental products.
Credit Insurance: Policies designed to fulfill certain loan obligations in the event of the policyholder’s death.
EMEA
The company operates across EMEA in both developed (Western Europe) and emerging (Central and Eastern Europe, Middle East, and Africa) markets. Its largest operations are in the Gulf region, the U.K., and France. In more mature markets, the company focuses its strategy on its preferred market segments to play a ‘niche’ role. It also has a strong market presence in emerging markets leveraging a multi-channel distribution strategy.
The company’s businesses in EMEA use captive and independent agency, independent brokerage, bancassurance, corporate solutions, and direct-to-consumer distribution channels.
Major Products
Life Insurance: Traditional and non-traditional life insurance products, such as whole and term life, endowments, and variable life products, as well as group term life programs in most markets.
Retirement and Savings: Fixed annuities and pension products, including group pension programs in select markets.
Accident & Health Insurance: Individual and group personal accident and supplemental health products, including AD&D, hospital indemnity, scheduled medical reimbursement plans, and coverage for serious medical conditions. In addition, the company provides individual and group major medical coverage in select markets.
Credit Insurance: Policies designed to fulfill certain loan obligations in the event of the policyholder’s death.
MetLife Holdings
This segment consists of operations relating to products and businesses that the company no longer actively markets in the U.S. These include variable, universal, term, and whole life insurance, variable, fixed, and index-linked annuities, and long-term care insurance. It also includes an in-force block of assumed variable annuity guarantees from a third party.
Major Products
Variable, Universal, and Term Life Insurance: Similar to products offered by the Group Benefits segment, except that these products were historically marketed to individuals through various retail distribution channels.
Whole Life Insurance: A benefit upon the death of the insured in return for the periodic payment of a fixed premium over a predetermined period. Whole life insurance includes policies that provide a participation feature in the form of dividends. Policyholders may receive dividends in cash, or apply them to increase death benefits, increase cash values available upon surrender, or reduce the premiums required to maintain the contract in force.
Variable Annuities: Variable annuities provide for asset accumulation and asset distribution needs. Variable annuities allow the contract holder to allocate deposits into various investment options in a separate account, as determined by the contract holder. In certain variable annuity products, contract holders may also choose to allocate all or a portion of their account to the company’s general account and are credited with interest at rates determined by the company, subject to specified minimums.
Fixed and Indexed-Linked Annuities: Fixed annuities provide for asset accumulation and asset distribution needs. Deposits made into deferred annuity contracts are allocated to the company’s general account and are credited with interest at rates determined by the company, subject to specified minimums. Fixed income annuities provide a guaranteed monthly income for a specified period of years and/or for the life of the annuitant. Additionally, the company has issued indexed-linked annuities that allow the contract holder to participate in returns from equity indices.
Long-term Care: Protection against the potentially high costs of long-term health care services. Generally, it pays benefits to insureds who need assistance with activities of daily living or have a cognitive impairment.
Corporate & Other
Corporate & Other contains various start-up, developing, and run-off businesses.
Regulation
In the U.S., state regulators primarily regulate the company’s life insurance companies, with additional federal regulation of some of its products and services. The insurance holding company laws of various the U.S. jurisdictions apply to MetLife. and its U.S. insurance subsidiaries. Furthermore, consumer protection laws, privacy, anti-money laundering, securities, commodities, broker-dealer and investment adviser regulations, environmental and unclaimed property laws and regulations, and the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (‘ERISA’) also apply to some of the company’s operations, products, and services.
The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (‘Dodd-Frank’) increased the federal role in regulating businesses, such as the company.
The company is subject to the U.S. state insurance holding company laws and regulations that are generally based on the National Association of Insurance Commissioners’ (‘NAIC’) Insurance Holding Company System Regulatory Act and Regulation.
MetLife’s lead state regulator is the New York State Department of Financial Services (‘NYDFS’).
Most of the company’s the U.S. insurance subsidiaries are subject to risk-based capital (‘RBC’) requirements.
The European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority, along with European legislation, requires European regulators, such as the Central Bank of Ireland, to establish supervisory forums for European Economic Area (‘EEA’)-based insurance groups with significant European operations, including MetLife.
The company’s EEA insurance business is subject to the Solvency II Directive, governing capital adequacy, risk management, and regulatory reporting. Solvency II harmonizes insurance regulation across the European Union (‘EU’).
In China, the business of the company’s joint venture (as well as the industry) has implemented the China Risk Oriented Solvency System (‘C-ROSS’), a risk-based solvency regime.
The NYDFS promulgated the New York Cybersecurity Requirements for Financial Services Companies (the ‘Regulation’) to promote the protection of customer information and information technology. Entities under the NYDFS’s jurisdiction, such as the company’s insurance entities licensed in New York, must conduct risk assessments of their information systems and maintain a cybersecurity program designed to protect the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of such systems and data.
In the U.S., the company is subject to state laws imposing obligations on the processing of personal information and providing consumers specific rights over such information. For instance, the California Consumer Privacy Act (‘CCPA’) requires covered companies to provide disclosures to California consumers about such companies’ data collection, use, and sharing practices and gives California residents expanded rights with respect to the processing of their personal information. In 2020, the CCPA was amended by the California Privacy Rights Act, imposing additional rights and obligations. While a significant portion of the company’s business is exempted from the CCPA, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act and other state insurance laws to which the company is subject grant similar rights to insureds.
Outside of the U.S., the company’s subsidiaries are subject to various data protection regimes, including the General Data Protection Regulation (EU) 2016/679 (‘GDPR’), which imposes strict requirements for controllers and processors of personal data and on transfers of personal data outside of the EEA to countries that have not been deemed ‘adequate’ by the European Commission.
The company provides products and services to certain employee benefit plans that are subject to ERISA and/or Section 4975 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended (the ‘Code’).
In New York, the NYDFS expects both New York domestic insurers, such as MLIC, and foreign authorized insurers, such as the company’s other insurance subsidiaries licensed in New York, to manage material climate risks by taking actions that are proportionate to the nature, scale, and complexity of their businesses.
Although the consumer financial services subject to the CFPB’s jurisdiction generally exclude the insurance business of the kind in which the company engages, the CFPB does have authority to regulate non-insurance consumer services the company provides.
Some of the company’s subsidiaries and their activities in offering and selling variable insurance products are subject to extensive regulation under the federal securities laws and regulations administered by the SEC. These subsidiaries issue variable annuity contracts and variable life insurance policies with separate accounts that are registered with the SEC as investment companies under the Investment Company Act of 1940, as amended (the ‘Investment Company Act’), or are exempt from registration under the Investment Company Act. Such separate accounts are generally divided into sub-accounts, each of which invests in an underlying mutual fund, which is itself a registered investment company under the Investment Company Act. In addition, the variable annuity contracts and variable life insurance policies associated with these separate accounts are registered with the SEC under the Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the ‘Securities Act’), or are exempt from registration under the Securities Act. One of the company’s insurance subsidiaries issues a fixed interest rate contract with features that require it to be registered under the Securities Act.
Two of the company’s U.S. subsidiaries are registered with the SEC as broker-dealers under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (the ‘Exchange Act’), and are members of, and subject to regulation by, FINRA. The SEC, CFTC, and FINRA from time to time propose and adopt rules and regulations that impact broker-dealers and products deemed to be securities.
One of the company’s U.S. subsidiaries is registered as an investment adviser with the SEC under the Investment Advisers Act of 1940, as amended. In addition, the company has non-U.S. subsidiaries that are registered or licensed in non-U.S. jurisdictions to conduct its investment management business.
One of the company’s U.S. broker-dealers serves as the principal underwriter and distributor of these variable products and other securities offerings. The company’s broker-dealer distributes these products via unaffiliated third-party broker-dealers and financial intermediaries that sell these products to end investors. Under SEC rules, these selling broker-dealers are required to comply with various SEC and FINRA rules and regulations, including Regulation Best Interest. SEC rules also require these selling broker-dealers to disclose the nature of services, their standard of conduct, and their conflicts of interest to their retail customers. With regard to insurance products, the NAIC revised its Suitability in Annuity Transactions Model Regulation to add a ‘best interest’ standard for the sale of annuities. All of the company’s insurance subsidiaries’ domiciliary states have adopted the model regulation or another form of the best interest standard.
Federal and state securities regulatory authorities and FINRA from time to time make inquiries and conduct examinations regarding compliance by MetLife. and its subsidiaries with securities and other laws and regulations.
Trademarks
The company has a worldwide trademark portfolio that it considers important in the marketing of its products and services, including among others, the trademark ‘MetLife.’ The company also has trademarks, such as the ‘PROVIDA’ trademark, it has acquired with businesses.
History
MetLife, Inc., a Delaware corporation, was incorporated in 1999.
