Most likely you’re here today to learn more about starting a career selling life insurance with Metropolitan Life (MetLife).

If you want to know if working with MetLife as an insurance agent is a good idea, you’ve found the right article.

Let’s jump right in!

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• • About

• • Products

• • Pay

• • Leads

• • Scam?

• • My Thoughts

About MetLife (Metropolitan Life)

Metropolitan Life, also known as MetLife, was founded in 1868. Through its subsidiaries, affiliates. and operations in more than 50 countries, it is one of the largest life insurance companies in the world.

The company has been headquartered in New York, NY since its inception. It serves all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

In August 2017, the life insurance division split off from MetLife to become Brighthouse Financial, an independent company with operations headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Brighthouse Financial offers term life insurance and SmartCare, indexed universal life insurance with long-term care benefits.

What products do MetLife agents sell?

MetLife insurance agents sell term life insurance, group variable universal life insurance, group universal life insurance, and accidental death insurance:

• • Term life insurance. Selling term life insurance coverage provides temporary financial protection for the policyholder’s beneficiaries to help them with funeral costs and ongoing financial obligations, such as daily living expenses, children’s education, and mortgage payments.

• • Group variable universal life. This is a permanent life insurance policy with a savings component that allows for the investment of the cash value.

• • Group universal life insurance. Group universal life insurance combines life insurance and savings options.

• • Accidental death insurance. Accidental death and dismemberment coverage is an affordable option for protection against unexpected events that result in loss of life, speech, hearing, or sight loss, paralysis, and more.

How agent compensation works

MetLife offers its agents both base compensation, commission payouts on sold policies, and other types of compensations such as supplemental compensations of up to 2.25% of premiums that recognize new and longstanding relationships.

MetLife uses graded scales to calculate base compensation.

In addition, MetLife agents have access to a comprehensive benefits training curriculum that allows them to gain deeper knowledge and skills about products, sales, and underwriting.

Training sessions are led by MetLife experts through their state-of-the-art training program.

Furthermore, MetLife University offers broker education to help agents build their foundation at MetLife and to be able to deliver the best solutions to their clients.

How leads and marketing work

MetLife insurance agents attend referral technique workshops to find out how to get referrals in the most effective way possible.

They are taught techniques like cold calling, setting up a booth, and creating testimonial videos to gain referrals.

They can then easily incorporate what they have learned into their script and use it in their daily sales activities.

The emphasis of agent training is building knowledge to be able to explain products, provide more insightful comparisons, and know what solutions would fit customers’ needs best.

Customers appreciate a product more when they can clearly understand how it benefits them.

Is MetLife a scam, MLM, or pyramid scheme?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfQiJ8Db6xo&t=21s

MetLife is a legitimate company and it is not a scam. The company has over 150 years of experience serving customers around the world.

MetLife is recognized by all top independent ratings providers. It holds an excellent A+ rating from AM Best, AA- rating from Standard and Poor’s, as well as AA- Fitch rating.

The company has performed strongly over the last decade and won several awards, including the Best Managed Insurance Company award by Forbes magazine.

MetLife is not a multi-level marketing (MLM) business opportunity or pyramid scheme. That means that the company doesn’t have multiple layers of agents, mentors, and trainers. The company is, therefore, not suitable for agents who are primarily looking to recruit.

Things to Consider

Now you know a little more about how an insurance agent career with MetLife works, here’s some thoughts to consider:

Compensation

While money isn’t everything, it does make a significant impact on most agent’s profitability, and plays an important role in which agency or company to work with.

In most cases working as an agent directly with the company, agents are paid less than if they worked through an insurance independent marketing organization.

Plus, traditional insurance career paths like working with MetLife generally pay less across all products than being an independent broker.

Working For One Company

One of the biggest challenges of working for MetLife is your exclusive arrangement in selling their products.

In industry lingo, this is known as being a “captive agent.” You can only sell MetLife products and cannot represent other products as well.

Why is this a problem? Simply put, no one company has a clear cut advantage in underwriting and pricing.

In other words, if an insurance agent represents one carrier only to his clients, he’ll likely sell coverage that’s not consistently priced well or flexible enough to handle all underwriting circumstances.

Less Options = Less Sales

Recruiting and training many agents over the years, I’ve learned that less carrier options equates to less sales.

For example, I knew one agent that couldn’t get coverage in place on an elderly couple with a well known New York based life insurance company due to mild diabetes. For brokers, this is relatively easy to do.

Another example: I have an agent friend that lost a $250,000 annual income in the span of 2 months after the 2011 tornado season.

He specialized in chicken coup commercial insurance as a captive agent in Alabama. Many coups were destroyed, all filed claims, and the captive company terminated their coverage after filing.

In other words, this agent lost ALL of his business, and could NOT place the business elsewhere, even though other carriers would happily take it (he was contractually bound by a non-compete clause).

Independent Vs Captive

What’s the solution to this risk of losing business?

Become an independent broker instead of a captive agent.

An independent agent can contract with multiple insurance companies, unlike the captive agent.

This naturally expands the agent’s ability to offer coverage most suitable for the client’s underwriting issues while getting the opportunity to shop for the most competitive premiums.

As an agent, this results in more of your sales presentations converted into new policy sales. Plus, it’s likely your client will get better access to price and underwriting terms, as the companies are competing for your client’s business.

Summary

I hope you enjoy this article and understand a little more about how an insurance sales career with MetLife works.

I train new and experienced agents to become top producing agents in final expense, Medicare Advantage, and annuity sales.

If you’d like more information about how my organization works, click the link here.

Make sure to also check out my agent success stories as well as my best selling insurance sales books.