User:16912 Rhiannon/MetLife (full draft)

MetLife, Inc. is the holding corporation for Metropolitan Life Insurance Company (MLIC), or MetLife for short, and its affiliates. MetLife is among the largest global providers of insurance, annuities, and employee benefit programs, with 100 million customers in approximately 50 countries. The firm was founded on March 24, 1868.

On January 6, 1915, MetLife completed the mutualization process, changing from a stock life insurance company owned by individuals to a mutual company operating without external shareholders and for the benefit of policyholders. The company went public in 2000. Through its subsidiaries and affiliates, MetLife holds leading market positions in the United States, Japan, Latin America, Asia’s Pacific region, Europe, and the Middle East. MetLife organizes its product offerings into three regions: the Americas, Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) and Asia. MetLife provides products and services to 90 of the largest Fortune 500 companies. The company’s principal offices are located at 1095 Avenue of the Americas in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, though it retains some executive offices and its boardroom in the MetLife Building, located at 200 Park Avenue, New York City, which it sold in 2005.

Early years
The predecessor company to MetLife began in 1863 when a group of New York City businessmen raised $100,000 to found the National Union Life and Limb Insurance Company. The company insured Civil War sailors and soldiers against disabilities due to wartime wounds, accidents, and sickness. On March 24, 1868, it became known as Metropolitan Life Insurance Company and shifted its focus to the life insurance business. A 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. After observing the insurance industry in Great Britain in 1879, MetLife President Joseph F. Knapp brought “industrial” or “workingmen’s” insurance programs to the United States – insurance issued in small amounts on which premiums were collected weekly or monthly at the policyholder’s home. By 1880, sales had exceeded a quarter million of such policies, resulting in nearly $1 million in revenue from premiums. In 1909, MetLife had become the nation’s largest life insurer in the U.S., as measured by life insurance in force (the total value of life insurance policies issued).

In 1907, the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company tower was commissioned to serve as MetLife’s 23rd Street headquarters in Lower Manhattan. Completed two years later, the building was the world's tallest until 1913 and remained the company's headquarters until 2005. For many years, an illustration of the building (with light emanating from the tip of its spire and the slogan, "The Light That Never Fails") featured prominently in MetLife’s advertising. By 1930, MetLife insured every fifth man, woman, and child 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 company financed the construction of the Empire State Building in 1929 as well as provided capital to build Rockefeller Center in 1931. During World War II, MetLife placed more than 51 percent of its total assets in war bonds, and was the largest single private contributor to the Allied cause.

Postwar
During the postwar era, the company expanded its suburban presence, decentralized operations, and refocused its career agency system to serve all market segments. It also began to market group insurance products to employers and institutions. By 1979, operations were segmented into four primary businesses: group insurance, personal insurance, pensions, and investments. In 1981, MetLife purchased what became known as the MetLife building for $400 million from a group that included Pan American World Airways.

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 - purchased 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 U.S. financial history.  MetLife policyholders were asked to choose a cash or stock stake. This IPO made MetLife the most widely owned stock in the United States, and it raised MetLife's value to over $4 billion.  By 2000, MetLife's reported number of policyholders had risen to 11 million, and that year it had become the United States' number one life insurer, surpassing Prudential, according to The New York Times.
 * 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 U.S. stock market during 2001, immediately after the September 11th 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 US$15.5 billion. The securities portion of the deal consisted of 78.2 million shares of MetLife common stock, 6.9 million shares of contingent convertible preferred stock and 40 million equity units. The values of the common and preferred stock were based on the closing price of MetLife’s common stock on October 29.  Upon completion of the purchase, MetLife became a leading competitor in Japan, the world’s second-largest life insurance market, and moved into a top 5 market position in many high growth emerging markets in Central and Eastern Europe, such as Romania, the Middle East and Latin America. The deal added 20 million customers to MetLife’s 70 million and according to Barron's more than doubled the percentage of operating profits that MetLife gets abroad to 40%.
 * 2011 - sold MetLife bank to GE Capital, exiting banking business.

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. That year, Barron's reported that 13 million American households owned at least one product from MetLife.

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 "US$450 billion investment portfolio" as chief investment officer. Henrikson remained the company's chairman to the end of 2011, at which point he reached the company's mandatory retirement age.

In 2015, MetLife was ranked as number one on Fortune magazine's list of World's Most Admired Companies in the Insurance: Life and Health category.

"Too big to fail"
MetLife was subject to stricter financial regulation due to its ownership of MetLife Bank and its mortgage business. Seeking to escape that level of regulation, in December 2011, MetLife announced the sale of its banking unit to GE Capital. In early 2012, MetLife failed the Federal Reserve’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 that MetLife at only 6%. The company had requested approval for a $2 billion share repurchase to prop up the stock price, along with an increased dividend. On November 2, 2012, MetLife said it was selling its $70 billion mortgage servicing business to JPMorgan Chase for an undisclosed amount. The sale of its depository banking unit to GE Capital was completed in January 2013. 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 U.S. 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 against the District of Columbia to overturn the federal regulators' decision, thus becoming the first nonbank to challenge such a decision. Three other nonbank companies have been designated as "systemically important": AIG, General Electric and Prudential. MetLife continued to litigate this issue as of mid-2015, with the US Department of Justice asking that their challenge be dismissed.

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 U.S. Department of Justice to resolve allegations it knowingly made mortgages insured by the U.S. government that didn’t meet federal underwriting requirements.

Corporate overview
MetLife is an insurance and financial services company headquartered in New York City. As of 2015, the company employs 65,000 people. MetLife operates in approximately 50 countries, and since 2011, the company has separated its global operations into three sectors: the Americas, Europe, and the Middle East, Africa (EMEA), and Asia.

In 2014, MetLife had a total annual revenue of $73.3 billion, and in 2013, the company had a total annual revenue of $68.2 billion. In 2012, MetLife reported a total revenue of $68.2 billion, and in 2011 its total annual revenue was $70.2 billion. Also in 2013, MetLife paid nearly $50 billion to policyholders. In 2014, MetLife was ranked number 42 on the Fortune 500 annual ranking of U.S. companies. In 2015, the company was listed at number 50 on the Forbes Global 2000 ranking of the world's largest publicly traded companies.

Corporate governance
Steve Kandarian has served as Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of MetLife since 2011, and he became Chairman of the Board in 2012. Hired in 2013, John Hele served as chief financial officer for the company as of 2015. In 2015, MetLife hired Hugh Dineen to fill the new role of chief marketing officer within the US Business Unit. As of 2015, Julio Garcia-Villalon leads the Middle East & Africa regional business, which is headquartered in the Dubai International Financial Centre and has operated in the region since the 1950s.

As in many large, public corporations, MetLife has a compensation committee which establishes compensation levels for the company's senior executives; MetLife compensation emphasizes "variable performance-based compensation over fixed or guarnteed pay".

Subsidiary and affiliate companies
MetLife subsidiaries and affiliates include MetLife Investors, MetLife Securities, Metropolitan Property and Casualty Insurance Company and its subsidiaries, General American, Hyatt Legal, MetLife Resources, New England Financial, and Safeguard Health Enterprises, Inc. In India, MetLife has an affiliate company India Insurance Company Limited (MetLife) which has operated in India since 2001 and is headquartered in Bangalore and Gurgaon.

The subsidiary MetLife Insurance Company USA, as of 2015 headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina, was formerly known as MetLife Insurance Company of Connecticut, and prior to this as Travelers Insurance Company.

MetLife Foundation
MetLife Foundation is MetLife's independent charitable and grant-awarding foundation. It was founded in 1976 and had provided over $650 million in grants by January 2015. The foundation has partnered with and donated to a variety of organizations, including Habitat for Humanity since 2010 and the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial Project Foundation since 2008. In 2013, the MetLife Foundation announced a new focus on financial inclusion, including educational programs on basic financial planning for disadvantaged children and financial services aimed at low-income communities.

Relationship with Peanuts
MetLife acquired exclusive rights to use Peanuts characters in the company's advertising in 1985. Since 2010, MetLife has licensed Snoopy and other Peanuts characters for promotional purposes from Peanuts Worldwide, the entity which currently oversees the Peanuts brand. Iconix Brand Group formed Peanuts Worldwide as a joint venture with Schulz’s heirs, buying out E.W. Scripps Co. and United Features Syndicate for $175 million. MetLife is reported to pay $12 million per year for licensing rights. Prior to the Iconix deal, MetLife had licensed the characters from other rights-holders. In 2006, MetLife's CEO at the time, C. Robert Henrikson, extended the company's license to use Peanuts characters to cover exclusive global use in the financial services category.

The Peanuts-based campaign was developed by the advertising agency Young & Rubicam. MetLife also has used Foote Cone & Belding to develop Peanuts-related promotions. MetLife has operated a blimp program featuring the Peanuts characters since 1987. Two blimps, Snoopy One and Snoopy Two, fly in the United States. Snoopy J, a third blimp, operates for MetLife in Japan.

Sports sponsorship
In 2008, MetLife became the first major marketing partner of the Meadowlands Stadium in New Jersey, which eventually became home to the New York Giants and Jets. The company has also been a sponsor of the New York Yankees since 2008. In 2011, MetLife secured a 25-year marketing and promotional rights partnership to brand the New York Giants and Jets stadium, formerly Meadowlands, as MetLife Stadium. In 2013, MetLife began a partnership with the PGA Tour and the World Baseball Classic and became global sponsors of both. As part of MetLife's relationship with the PGA Tour as "Official Life Insurance Company" of the PGA Tour and Champions Tour, the company's blimps, Snoopy One and Two, became the official source of aerial coverage for the tour. The agreement is set to run through 2016. MetLife blimps have covered the PGA Tour since 1987. In 2014, MetLife entered a partnership with the Badminton World Federation and became the title sponsor of the BWF World Championships.

Products and services
As of 2015, MetLife provides its products and services to approximately 100 million customers worldwide. It offers insurance, annuities and benefit services in close to 50 countries, including the United States, Mexico, Chile, United Kingdom, Poland, Japan, United Arab Emirates, China, South Korea, Australia, Nepal, Bangladesh, India and Pakistan. The company's services and products include life insurance, accident and health coverage and financial services including annuities and endowment funds.

The company is the market leader for insurance in the United States, Latin America, Asia, Europe and the Middle-East, as of 2015. In 2010, Barron's reported that the sale of insurance products made up 53% of MetLife's total revenue, which was estimated at $49 billion. In 2014, The Wall Street Journal reported that MetLife made a total of $409 million in insurance premiums sold to individuals in 2013. As of 2013, MetLife provided dental plan administration to 20 million customers worldwide and the company was ranked as the third largest provider of annuity products in the world.

MetLife organizes its product offerings into three regions: the Americas, Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) and Asia.

Americas
Within the Americas, MetLife offers its products in Argentina, Brazil, Chile,  the United States, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico and Uruguay. MetLife is the largest insurer in Mexico, Chile, Argentina, Ecuador and Uruguay.

According to Reuters, as of 2014, MetLife is the largest provider of life insurance in Mexico. The company is the United States' largest insurer. In 2014, Axco Global Statistics reported that MetLife was the largest provider of group life insurance and commercial dental coverage in the U.S.

As a part of its group life and individual life insurance products, MetLife offers several different types of personal insurance, including life insurance, vision insurance, dental insurance, disability insurance,  critical illness, accident insurance, hospital indemnity, property and casualty insurance, including but not limited to auto and home insurance and credit insurance. In 2004, MetLife became one of the first insurance companies in the United States to offer a longevity insurance product.

MetLife's dental plans include both a Preferred Dentist Program (PPO) and several Dental Health Maintenance Organization (DHMO) plans. Additionally, MetLife provides both a vision PPO and discount vision insurance.

MetLife offers several individual disability income policies that provide a portion of lost income if an individual is unable to work due to sickness or injury. The company's disability products are marketed toward individuals as well as to employee and association groups who receive them through their employer. The company also has an absence management product which allows employers with 1,000 or more employees to track and manage both planned and unplanned employee absences.

As part of its auto and home insurance business, MetLife also offers insurance through groups programs and identity protection services. MetLife has provided credit insurance since 2011. Its home insurance products include homeowners insurance, condo insurance, renters insurance, insurance for landlords' rental dwellings, and mobile home insurance. Also within auto and home services, MetLife provides insurance coverage for leisure vehicles, including boats, motorcycles, RVs and ATVs. The company also provides optional coverage for rental cars. In 2010, MetLife began offering a policy that allows users to combine all insured property into a single coverage plan. MetLife also offers flood insurance as a participant in the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), which is managed by the federal government.

In addition to its insurance offerings, since 2001 MetLife has provided its customers with five annuities with different options in terms of surrender period. Later in 2001, MetLife added variable life, mutual funds, retirement plans and other investment and insurance products. MetLife also offers 529 college savings plans, wealth management plans,   and fee-based financial planning. The company offers legal assistance through Hyatt Legal Plans, a subsidiary company which underwrites group legal plans in many states.

Other MetLife products include an identity protection tool which detects and removes suspicious activity from a customer's finances, monitors credit activity, manages the online activities of children using the internet and combats identity theft.

In addition to the above products, MetLife offers some related services, including the MetLife Center for Special Needs Planning, a group of planners that serves families and individuals with special needs. Also, the company administers a dental continuing education program for dentists and allied healthcare professionals, which is recognized by the American Dental Association (ADA) and the Academy of General Dentistry (AGD).

EMEA
MetLife offers many of its products in 29 countries in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, including life insurance, accident and health insurance, credit products, retirement and savings products, annuities and endowments. As of 2014, MetLife is one of the leading insurance companies in the United Arab Emirates. MetLife worked with Citigroup, Inc. in 2014 to provide credit insurance to 15 new countries by 2024, including Bahrain, Czech Republic, Egypt, Greece, Russia and Spain.

Asia
In Asia, including Australia, Bangladesh, Hong Kong, Nepal, South Korea, Vietnam, Japan, China, India and Malaysia, MetLife offers customers whole life, term life,  variable life, universal life insurance, accident and health insurance, credit insurance, endowment products, and fixed and variable annuities. According to MetLife's Asia regional president in 2014, the insurance market in that region is expected to see almost half of MetLife's overall growth in the next ten years.

MetLife and the “Ideal weight”
In 1959, The Metropolitan Life Insurance Company (as it was known at the time) released tables of the best weight for each height for longevity, based on their collected insurance data. These tables showed the “desirable weights”. In 1983, they released tables showing the “ideal” weights for greatest longevity; this information was based on data collected in the Build Study of 1979 collected by the Society of Actuaries. This data followed patients for 18 years (from 1954-1972) and was collected from 25 life insurance companies in Canada and the USA, representing 4.2 million people. These “ideal” weights were higher than the prior “desirable” weights, this was attributed to an increase in muscle mass due to improved fitness levels among the population. This study is still the largest available pool of data for this purpose. It was noticed that the average weights in the population are higher than the ideal weights for survival. The ‘’’Metropolitan Tables’’’ included ‘’small’’, ‘’medium’’ and ‘’large’’ frames, based on elbow-girth measured using calipers, as the elbows do not develop adipose tissue. They presented weight ranges for height, sex and body frame (again associated with the lowest mortality) The mid-point of the ideal weight for the medium frames for each height was selected as the “ideal” weight used for calculations of “excess weight” (initial weight-ideal weight). This led to a formula to calculate the ideal weight used by bariatric surgeons, but it had lost considerable accuracy by 2007, again due to improvements in medical care and in public health.

Awards and recognition
In 2009, 2011 and 2013, MetLife was included in Diversity MBA Magazine's "50 Out Front for Diversity Leadership".

In 2014, Forbes named MetLife as one of "America’s Most Reputable Companies". The Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption included MetLife on its 2014 "Best Adoption Friendly Workplaces" list for the seventh consecutive year. Since 1999, MetLife has been named each year by Working Mother magazine as one of the "100 Best Companies for Working Mothers". The company was included in this ranking again in 2014. MetLife earned several honors for encouraging workplace diversity in 2014: HispanicBusiness Inc. listed MetLife among the "Best Companies for Diversity"; and the company was also listed by Latina Style Magazine as one of its "Best Companies for Latinas". DiversityBusiness.com named MetLife as one of "America's Top 50 Organizations for Multicultural Business Opportunities", and The Hispanic Association for Corporate Responsibility named the company to their "Corporate Inclusion Index" for the third consecutive year.

Also in 2014, The Direct Marketing Association honored MetLife with its "2014 Marketer of the Year Award". Additionally, the Environmental Protection Agency Power Partnership named MetLife as a "Top 50 Green Power User".

In 2015, MetLife was ranked first in the Life and Health Insurance sector on Fortune Magazine's list of the "World’s Most-Admired Companies". The company was also recognized by Corporate Responsibility Magazine as one of the "100 Best Corporate Citizens". The Human Rights Campaign Foundation awarded MetLife a perfect score on its 2015 "Corporate Equality Index" and featured the company on its list of "Best Places to Work for LGBT Equality". MetLife has earned a perfect score on the Index since 2003. Also in 2015, Victory Media included MetLife on its list of "Military Friendly Employers" and the National Association for Female Executives named MetLife to its "Top 50 Companies for Executive Women" list. Alliance for Work-Life Progress awarded MetLife their "Seal of Distinction" for work-life balance. The company has received this distinction for three years: from 2013 to 2015.