1 MetLife Inc. is preparing to part ways with a central force in the company’s history: its life-insurance agents.
The nation’s largest life insurer by assets is in talks to sell a network of about 4,000 sales people to Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co., the companies said Thursday following a report in The Wall Street Journal.
It is “the end of an era for MetLife,” said Colin Devine, principal of insurance consulting firm C. Devine & Associates.
A sale of MetLife’s agent army would sever ties with an important contributor to the company’s rise as a nationwide giant. Decades ago MetLife had some 14,000 agents. For many years, they walked door to door to make sales and collect premiums. They became a fixture of American culture often portrayed in movies and television shows such as “Father Knows Best.”
The potential move is part of a larger effort by MetLife to slim down and respond to a shifting regulatory environment. It decided in January to divest a large piece of its U.S. life-insurance unit to reduce some of the capital burden it is expected to face under new federal regulations.