Met Life Says Lawyers, Chief Knew of Mailings : Insurance: Disclosure raises new questions in continuing probe of letters that pushed policies as retirement investments.
Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. disclosed Thursday that its president and senior lawyers knew for months about questionable sales promotion letters before the mailings were stopped last year.
Met Life, the nation’s biggest seller of life insurance, said lawyers at its New York headquarters approved letters sent by the company’s Tampa, Fla., office from mid-January through September.
The letters, pitching insurance as a retirement plan for nurses, are being investigated as potential evidence of deception in at least 17 states.
The company’s acknowledgment raises new concerns with investigators at a time when the troubled insurer had been trying to lay the controversy to rest.
“This disclosure raises questions for top Met Life management that we now intend to pursue,” said Thomas Tew, Florida’s lead investigator. “For one thing, it raises questions as to whether the company’s prior disciplinary actions are a cover-up.”
Met Life last month dismissed seven mid-level and senior executives, saying they had failed to ensure that the Tampa sales letters were properly authorized. The highest-ranking executives let go were Senior Vice President Richard Maurer, the company’s No. 2 personal insurance executive, and Arthur Spector, a vice president who developed sales brochures.
Richard Mandel, the company’s top personal insurance lawyer, denied that the headquarters-approved letters were misleading.
“All the letters we approved in 1993 were perfectly good from a legal point of view,” said Mandel, a vice president who supervises more than 20 lawyers. “They all made clear references to life insurance or permanent life.”
Mandel said the home office last year approved four letters that were models for mass mailings from Tampa for 8 1/2 months.
Mandel’s statement alters the company’s long-held position that the Tampa letters were improper because they had not been authorized by headquarters lawyers before last September.
