MetLife

MetLife, Inc., a financial services company, provides insurance, annuities, employee benefits, and asset management services worldwide. It operates through five segments: U.S.; Asia; Latin America; Europe, the Middle East and Africa; and MetLife Holdings. The company offers life, dental, group short-and long-term disability, individual disability, pet insurance, accidental death and dismemberment, vision, and accident and health coverages, as well as prepaid legal plans; administrative services-only arrangements to employers; and general and separate account, and synthetic guaranteed interest contracts, as well as private floating rate funding agreements. It also provides pension risk transfers, institutional income annuities, structured settlements, and capital markets investment products; and other products and services, such as life insurance products and funding agreements for funding postretirement benefits, as well as company, bank, or trust-owned life insurance used to finance nonqualified benefit programs for executives. In addition, it provides fixed, indexed-linked, and variable annuities; and pension products; regular savings products; whole and term life, endowments, universal and variable life, and group life products; longevity reinsurance solutions; credit insurance products; and protection against long-term health care services. MetLife, Inc. was founded in 1863 and is headquartered in New York, New York.

MetLife was founded in March 1868 as the National Union Life and Limb Insurance Company. It offered accident insurance to railway workers and eventually sold life insurance policies. In 1879, The Mutual Life Insurance Company of New York, the precursor to MetLife, Inc., was formed. In the 1880s, President Grover Cleveland appointed MetLife's president, T. Alexander. Anderson, to a key post in his administration. This appointment helped MetLife gain further national importance and influence. In 1896, MetLife purchased the first group life-insurance policy in the United States, providing coverage to 10,000 members of the National Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. With this transaction, MetLife ventured out as a major player in the group life-insurance market. In the late 1910s, MetLife began its expansion into the international market. In 1917, it began operating in Germany, followed by Japan, Columbia, Mexico, Egypt, and China in the 1920s. By the 1930s, MetLife had over one million policyholders in countries around the world. The Great Depression had dire consequences for MetLife and other companies around the world. MetLife experienced its first financial loss, posting a deficit amounting to 4.6 million dollars. To help address this, MetLife made sweeping changes to its business structure and organization. World War II put further strain on MetLife's business, as disruptions in the US life insurance market forced the company to shutter its international offices. However, despite its difficulties, MetLife again emerged as one of the leading life insurance companies after the war. It increased its presence in other countries around the world, including England, Canada, France, Italy, and Spain. MetLife’s prominence in the industry continued to grow in the 1950s and 1960s. In 1971, MetLife became the first life insurance company to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange. By the 1980s, MetLife had become the largest life insurer in the US, with more than 7 million policyholders. The company has also diversified its operations in recent years, offering auto, property and casualty, and financial planning services. The MetLife brand has become synonymous with financial stability and soundness. Today, it continues to be a major provider of life insurance, disability income insurance, annuities, and other financial products.

To provide financial security and peace of mind through our products and services.

To become the world’s most respected service brand.