Do we like them?

Do we like MetLife?

Global life insurance, annuities and employee benefits provider, headquartered in New York, US.

Our score: 5 out of 10. A huge, steady insurer that pays claims, but it has a record of regulatory fines over how it treated customers. We'd back it with caution, not enthusiasm.

MetLife is one of the world's biggest life insurers, based in New York and listed on the stock exchange. Michel Khalaf has been CEO since 2019. He joined in 2010 through the Alico deal. His 2026 proxy filing says he launched a 'New Frontier' strategy in 2025.

The track record has some blots. In 2014 MetLife agreed to pay $60 million to settle charges that its subsidiaries sought business in New York without the proper licences. The company disputed the charges.

In 2016 it agreed to pay $25 million to settle a FINRA probe into variable annuity abuses. FINRA called it the highest-ever penalty for those products.

In 2019 MetLife paid $10 million to settle SEC allegations about how it treated policyholders it presumed dead. It assumed customers had died or couldn't be found if they ignored two mailings sent five and a half years apart. It neither admitted nor denied the allegations. That's a customer-treatment issue, so we land in the middle.