Metropolitan Life Insurance

Metropolitan Life Insurance Company was founded on March 24th 1868 as a mutual organization and it is now known as MetLife for short.  It is the largest life insurer in America and offices are held at 1095 Avenue in Midtown Manhattan, New York City.  It deals with insurance for small businesses and large institutions as well as savings for retirement and has more than $3.3 trillion life insurance policies.  Although MetLife has always been run as a mutual company in year 2000 it went public.  In 1863 it was known as the National Union Life and Limb Insurance Company that was first started by a few New York businessmen to insure Civil War sailors and soldiers returning from war. Five years later, the Company changed its name to Metropolitan Life Insurance Company and started to sell life insurance to the middle class.  By the end of the first year of business it had issued 1,477 policies worth $4,340,000 and ran the business from an office located at 243 Broadway in Lower Manhattan.  By 1869 the company needed to expand and it moved to 319 Broadway. MetLife later became interested in insurance schemes that were operating very successfully in England to cover industrial and workingmen. The president of the Company Joseph F Knapp had the idea to employ English agents who could train the agents in their American Company. Having travelled to England in 1879 President Knapp was able to observe what would be involved by selling such insurances.  This was the start of issuing industrial insurance for the workingman and collecting the premiums weekly or monthly from their own home.

The business rapidly grew and by 1907 the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company had new premises built in Lower Manhattan where they remained until 2005.  This building in 1913 was the tallest building in the world and was shown on all MetLife advertising with the accompanying slogan "The Light That Never Fails". Also Snoopy a character from the Peanuts cartoons and other characters have featured in MetLife television commercials.  The MetLife Headquarters building was seen to be destroyed in the film Godzilla in 1998 and the MetLife Headquarters was also featured in Spider-Man; The Movie.  After the September 11 terrorist attacks in 2001 MetLife invested $1 billion in the US stock market. MetLife was named in 2005 by Working Mother magazine as one of the 100 Best Companies for Working Mothers. This was not the first time as it had been named for the past seven years as one of the best.

Today MetLife has customers all over the world and deals with a range of different insurance policies.  These include Life Insurance, Group Life Insurance, Long term care insurance, Retirement planning, Auto and Home insurance, Disability Insurance, Wealth management, Commercial and Residential mortgage, Mutual funds and investments, Dental insurance.  It is a reputable and well established Insurance Company and anyone considering taking out Life Insurance will not get a better policy elsewhere.