Among Only Small Percentage of Call Centers to Earn "Second Year Center of Excellence" Certification

New York, October 23, 2006 – MetLife, Inc. announced today that its Customer Response Center has, for the second straight year, earned the prestigious designation of "Certified Center of Excellence" by Purdue University's Center for Customer-Driven Quality in conjunction with BenchmarkPortal, a national benchmarking firm. Only the top ten percent of contact centers that apply for certification earn the designation, and only 25 percent of those winning centers earn certification two years in a row.

Center of Excellence certification is based on a contact center’s ability to exceed rigorously validated, objective performance metrics compared to its industry peer group, and is based on best-practice metrics from the world’s largest contact center database, which has approximately 20,000 current members, representing 28 countries and 43 industries.

In recognizing MetLife, Dru Phelps, Vice President of Certification at BenchmarkPortal stated, "With MetLife being a well-established, mature company, it is refreshing that they continually embrace new strategies to improve their business. For example, their use of the Four-Quad Balanced Scorecard for performance management provides a continuum of key metrics from top management to the front-line associate."

"Achieving Center of Excellence Certification two years in a row comes as the result of a continued commitment to our associates, customers, and business partners, and affirms the Customer Response Center’s position as a significant contributor to the value of the MetLife brand," added Tom Purcaro, vice president of MetLife’s Customer Response Center. "We are thrilled to be exceeding industry benchmark results as this provides a competitive advantage for MetLife."

About MetLife

MetLife, Inc. is a leading provider of insurance and financial services with operations throughout the U.S. and the Latin America, Europe and Asia Pacific regions. Through its domestic and international subsidiaries and affiliates, MetLife, Inc. reaches more than 70 million customers around the world and MetLife is the largest life insurer in the U.S. (based on life insurance in-force). The MetLife companies offer life insurance, annuities, auto and home insurance, retail banking and other financial services to individuals, as well as group insurance, reinsurance and retirement and savings products and services to corporations and other institutions. For more information, please visit www.metlife.com.

About Purdue University's Center for Customer-Driven Quality (CCDQ)

Purdue University’s CCDQ is internationally recognized as the premier research and education organization for behavior in customer access and access channel management issues. For questions about CCDQ, please contact Dr. Jon Anton at 765.494.8357.

About BenchmarkPortal

BenchmarkPortal is the custodian of Purdue University’s Center for Customer-Driven Quality™ database of contact center performance metrics, the largest such database in the world. In 2005, BenchmarkPortal received U.S. Patent #6,877,034 for its unique methodology of call center performance evaluation through metric gap analysis. BenchmarkPortal provides industry reports, and professional services for contact centers in the areas of operational metrics, customer satisfaction measurement, and agent satisfaction measurement. For more information about BenchmarkPortal, call 805.614.0123, extension 50, or visit our Web site at: www.BenchmarkPortal.com.