Early years in
Boston, one of the predecessor companies of MetLife The predecessor company to MetLife began in 1863 when a group of New York City business leaders raised to found the
National Union Life and Limb Insurance Company headquartered on lower Broadway. The company insured
Civil War sailors and soldiers against disabilities due to wartime wounds, accidents, and sickness. Millions of "industrial" or workingman's policies were sold, costing five to ten cents a week, which were collected at the policyholder's home. in Manhattan, which previously served as company headquarters, was featured in its advertising for many years. The Chicago fire of 1871 that destroyed 2,000 acres and $200 million (equivalent to $ in ) worth of property, severely affected the insurance companies, which were legally obligated but financially unable to cover losses. Then, severe business depression that began with the
Panic of 1873 forced the company to contract, until it reached its lowest point in the late 1870s. In 1890, the
Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Building was commissioned to serve as MetLife's home office on
23rd Street in Manhattan. The building was completed in stages through 1905. A clock tower was commissioned adjacent to the home office in 1907, and when completed two years later, the building was the world's tallest until 1913. The home office complex, which came to include the later art deco
Metropolitan Life North Building, remained the company's headquarters until 2005. For many years, an illustration of the Metropolitan Life Tower (with light emanating from the tip of its spire and the slogan, "The Light That Never Fails") featured prominently in MetLife's advertising. In 1905, a predecessor company, New England Life, lost a legal case,
Pavesich v. New England Life Insurance Company, where they attempted to use an image of another person for promotion but this was ruled a breach of privacy and libelous: this case became a standardly cited case on privacy in US law. By 1930, MetLife insured one of five men, women, and children in the United States and Canada. During the 1930s, it also began to diversify its portfolio by reducing the percentage of individual mortgages in favor of public utility bonds, investments in government securities, and loans for commercial real estate. The building was subsequently renamed and the prominently displayed Pan Am logo was replaced with the MetLife logo.
De-mutualization and IPO In 2000, MetLife converted from a mutual insurance company operated for the benefit of its policyholders to a for-profit public company. The de-mutualization process allowed MetLife to enter unrelated insurance businesses and increase executive compensation. Policyholders received some stock in the new company in this process. MetLife was accused of breaching federal securities laws by misrepresenting and omitting information in materials given to policyholders during this process, resulting in years of litigation ending with a $50 million settlement in 2009.
Acquisitions, sales, and major deals • 1992 – merged with United Mutual Life Insurance Company, the only African-American life insurer in New York, in 1992. • 1992 – acquired
Executive Life's single premium deferred
annuity business, which was worth approximately $1.2 billion. MetLife also acquired the firm's life insurance business, valued at about $260 million. • 1995 – sold
Century 21 to
Cendant (known as Hospitality Franchise Systems at the time) while purchasing New England Mutual Life Insurance Company. • 1997 – acquired Security First Group in 1997 for $377 million. • 1999 – acquired
Lincoln National Corporation's individual disability income unit. • 1999 – bought out reinsurance provider GenAmerica Corporation for $1.2 billion, as well as its subsidiaries,
Reinsurance Group of America and
Conning Corporation. That year, the company had grown to serve 7 million policyholders. • 2000 – de-mutualization and IPO. The
initial public offering was valued at $6.5 billion, which was the largest IPO to that date in United States financial history. By 2000, MetLife's reported number of policyholders had risen to 11 million, • 2000 – $470 million voice and data network management deal with AT&T Solutions. • 2001 – acquired Grand Bank of
Kingston, New Jersey, which was renamed MetLife Bank. • 2001 – invested $1 billion in the United States stock market during 2001, immediately after the
September 11 terrorist attacks. • 2005 – acquired
Citigroup’s Travelers Life & Annuity and all of Citigroup's international insurance businesses for $11.8 billion. At the time of the deal, which was completed on July 1, 2005, the Travelers acquisition made MetLife the largest individual life insurer in North America based on sales. • 2006 – opened joint-venture insurance company in Shanghai, in May 2006. • 2006 – sold
Peter Cooper Village, or Stuyvesant Town, the largest apartment complexes in New York City at the time, for $5.4 billion. MetLife had developed the apartment complexes between 1945 and 1947, to house veterans returning home from serving in
World War II. • 2010 – bought
American Life Insurance Company from
AIG for . • 2021 – Farmers Insurance Group acquired the MetLife Auto & Home business from MetLife, Inc.
Current era From 2004 to 2011, MetLife continued to hold its position as the largest life insurer in the United States. The company had $2.5 trillion in policies written, $350 billion in assets under management, over 12 million customers in the United States, 8 million customers outside the United States, and a net income in 2003 of $2.2 billion. MetLife named
Robert H. Benmosche as chairman and CEO in July 1999.
Benmosche occupied the position until 2006, when he was replaced by
C. Robert Henrikson. The company's sales grew 11.5% between 2008 and 2009, despite the
national recession. In 2011, CEO
Robert Henrikson was replaced by
Steven A. Kandarian, who had overseen the company's " investment portfolio" as
chief investment officer. In the summer of 2017, MetLife plans to add a third office building of 255,000 square feet at its
Cary, North Carolina Global Technology Campus, giving the company a total of 655,000 square feet at a location which has over 1,000 employees in such areas as engineering, software and technology. This plan was the result of North Carolina awarding the company $94 million in incentives in 2013 for creating over 2,600 jobs, half in Cary and half in
Charlotte.
"Too big to fail" In 2012, MetLife failed the Federal Reserve's (the Fed's)
Comprehensive Capital Analysis and Review stress test, intended to predict the potential failure of the company in a recession. The Fed stated that the minimum total
risk-based capital ratio should be 8% and it estimated MetLife's ratio at 6%. The company had requested approval for a
share repurchase to prop up the stock price, along with an increased dividend. Because MetLife owned MetLife Bank, it was subject to stricter financial regulation. To escape that level of regulation, MetLife announced the sale of its banking unit to
GE Capital. On November 2, 2012, MetLife said it was selling its mortgage servicing business to
JPMorgan Chase for an undisclosed amount. Both sales were part of its strategy to focus on the insurance side of its business. The attempt to escape "
too big to fail" regulation was not successful. In September 2014, the United States government observed the
2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law by proposing the application of an official label to MetLife as "
systemically important" to the American economy. If implemented, MetLife would be subject to different sets of rules and regulations, with increased oversight from the
Federal Reserve. The company appealed this proposal in November 2014. In December 2014, federal regulators decided that MetLife required the special regulations reserved for financial companies and organizations deemed "systemically important," or "too big to fail". MetLife announced in January 2015 that it would file a lawsuit with the
U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to overturn the federal regulators' decision,
Fines On August 7, 2012, it was announced that MetLife will pay $3.2 million in fines after the
Federal Reserve charged it used unsafe and unsound practices in handling its mortgage servicing and foreclosure operations. In 2014, MetLife paid $23 million to settle multiple lawsuits over
junk fax operations used to generate leads for life insurance sales. In 2015, MetLife Home Loans LLC paid $123.5 million to the
United States Department of Justice to resolve allegations it knowingly made mortgages insured by the United States government that didn't meet federal underwriting requirements. ==Products and services==