MetLife Investors Group, a new unit of New York-based MetLife Inc., will make its headquarters in a 41,000-square foot building in Newport Center.
MetLife Investors Group,created by combining the operations of MetLife units Security First Group Inc., Los Angeles, and Cova Corp., Chicago,will move into the building at 22 Corporate Plaza in May. The building is being leased from The Irvine Company; terms were not disclosed.
MetLife Inc. sells mutual funds, annuities and insurance products through its own network of agents. The new unit will package the products and sell them into other distribution channels, such as other insurance agents, registered investment advisors, financial planners, regional broker-dealers, wirehouses and banks.
“MetLife now has an entity that can assume the task of manufacturing product through a third party,” said Gregory Brakovich, co-chief executive of MetLife Investors Group.
“It will allow them to sell that product (through other agents) so it doesn’t have to got through the same distribution chain of MetLife,” said Brian Horn, senior vice president and co-founder of GoApply.com, an online insurance distribution company. “It opens up the market as far as MetLife is concerned. They have access to the whole sales force that is out there.”
The group is headed by co-CEOs Brakovich and James Shepherdson. Both were hired from Equitable Distributors Inc., a company that packages financial products, where they also were co-CEOs.
MetLife gave Brakovich his choice of where to have the company headquartered and he chose Newport Beach.
“This would give us a premier position here. Outside of Pacific Life and PIMCO you don’t have many companies (like us) here,” Brakovich said. He said he also likes the talent pool fed by the local universities.
The company has about 120 employees and expects that to jump to 220 by the end of the year. The company already has begun hiring, since it will not relocate many of its employees from either the Los Angeles or Chicago offices.
MetLife has been trying to expand its presence in the financial services industry. In 1999 it acquired General American Life Insurance Co. and got into the retail banking business last August when it agreed to acquire Grand Bank N.A., in Kingston, N.J., a retail bank with $80 million in assets and $52 million in deposits.
MetLife acquired Security First Group in 1997 from Ontario, Canada-based London Insurance Group Inc. for $377 million. MetLife picked up Cova in 1999 when it acquired General American. n
