05. Metropolitan Life Insurance

Metropolitan Life is the top insurance company in market share and consumer awareness in seven Hispanic markets in the United States. The company discovered Hispanics by accident when it was looking for overseas markets. Met Life was looking for other countries but found a country within a country, called Hispanic America, comprised of millions of people.

Research showed that recent immigrants were prime life insurance customers. Hispanics were seen as stable, hard-working, family-oriented, and interested in savings, their children's education, and making it in America—similar in those respects to immigrants of earlier eras.

Metropolitan embarked on a nationwide marketing effort tailored to the needs of Spanish-speaking Americans. The company uses bilingual managers and sales representatives supported with Spanish language sales promotion material, advertising, direct mail, and special telemarketing programmes. It established a bilingual toll-free number for questions and new orders. In four years, Metropolitan Life went from fourth in the market penetration of Hispanics to first.

A door-to-door survey was recently conducted of 1400 Hispanics in Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, San Antonio, and San Francisco. The study ranked Metropolitan first in the three categories it measured: top-of-mind awareness, total unaided awareness, and consumer life insurance ownership as a measure of market share.

Metropolitan has programmed its nationwide computerized sales system to print out information in Spanish and English, to serve Hispanic customers. In addition, the Metropolitan Life Foundation, the philanthropic arm of the company, plans to award scholarships through the National Hispanic Scholarship Fund to Hispanic students in colleges and universities in areas where Metropolitan has offices.

Less than a year after its marketing roll-out, Metropolitan had doubled its life insurance market share in some parts of the country. In others its share was tripled. The company now intends to strengthen and increase its leadership in the Hispanic market. As a result of Metropolitan's success in that market, the company recently expanded operations to the Caribbean by opening an office in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

The company's experience with Hispanic customers changed the way senior management looked at the United States and started them thinking about marketing to different groups. Asian Americans stood out as the next undiscovered market. Metropolitan Life already had 300 Asian salespeople, and the company's top sales offices in Los Angeles and Houston, were headed by Asians.

Life insurance salespeople expect that about 15 percent of their customers will let their insurance lapse in an average year. However, Asian customers have a lapse rate of between 5 and 10 percent. And Asian Families routinely save as much as one-fifth of their income.

Focus group research with Asian salespeople uncovered special qualities in Asian American consumers. Recently arrived Asian householders may be well-educated and hold down skilled jobs, but they usually choose conservative savings and investment plans because security is of critical importance. They follow powerful traditions of respect for elders and love of children. Chinese consumers purchase insurance to protect the family and pay for education, so they choose plans that offer high cash value. Korean consumers, although still interested in security, express more interest in plans that provide a maximum return on investment. To sell insurance to a Korean, an agent must first be introduced by a mutual acquaintance because few will buy from strangers. Filipino consumers are most interested in education, while Vietnamese consumers, the newest group of immigrants, are "survival oriented."

These profiles were used to develop marketing plans for Boston, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, New York City, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C. The company has translated sales and promotional literature into Chinese and Korean, and they have hired a small agency in New York that specializes in the Chinese market, to develop ads. After Metropolitan Life establishes itself among Chinese and Korean Americans, it plans to begin selling insurance to Vietnamese, Filipino, Laotian, and Indian consumers.