‘My job is currently a seven day a week commitment. I need to stay in touch with what’s going on at all times and thanks to modern communications, that’s now possible. With the IPO coming up, I have a regular update meeting every Sunday, which keeps me informed on the latest developments and helps me prepare for the week ahead. By Monday morning I’m checking the papers on my way into the office, which is located on Madison Avenue in Manhattan. As we’re not yet a public company, I don’t yet have a stock price to check on, though I am obviously interested in what’s going on elsewhere in the insurance sector.
I joined MetLife in May 1998 and am now in charge of the operations side of the demutualization process, building our department and preparing the company for its IPO. This effort is on an unbelievable scale. For example, we have 500 operators answering queries in our call centers, taking anything up to 68,000 calls a day. The demutualization involves about 11 mn institutional and individual policyholders, though we have encountered problems tracing some of our 800,000 industrial policyholders, many of whom have no social security number. Their records were not held on computer, but on index cards, left undisturbed for decades.
Double base
Along with these individual shareholders, MetLife also has about 64,000 institutional customers, many more than other companies that have demutualized. We expect our shareholder base to be twice the size of the next largest public company in the US and it’s our job to balance excellent customer service for these people with reasonable costs.
In the past few days we’ve been getting ready to mail out share allocation statements and tax ID forms to every investor. The information could be delivered via e-mail or the internet, but we are legally obliged by the New York State superintendent of insurance to distribute this news in document form through the post. We had to enlist massive external help for the initial mailing program. We flooded the postal system with 11.1mn pieces of mail over the holiday period, but good teamwork ensured the task was completed smoothly. Now that the relevant documentation has been delivered and the policyholders have approved the demutualization plan, we will be following up with a roadshow campaign.
In recent days I have been heavily involved in planning our roadshow program. Two separate teams will spend about three weeks visiting cities throughout the US and Europe. London is a good stop on any roadshow itinerary, as many of our Asian investors do business through there. We’re very aware that when you’re looking to raise money, the roadshow must be thoroughly professional and informative, to reflect well on the management team and the company.
I’ve also been spending a lot of time dealing with underwriting issues. This week, we’ve just completed the due diligence process with our lead underwriters and co-managers, Credit Suisse First Boston and Goldman Sachs. In an IPO of this size there is a plethora of rules and regulations to meet. For example, New York insurance law forbids us from marketing the deal during the registration period, but thorough planning has allowed us to follow all its guidelines very well. We also have to comply with the rules of the New York State Insurance Department. I’ve attended several hearings, describing our operations process to the department in the greatest possible detail; and we’ve submitted hundreds of documents to them.
You tend to come across a lot of ‘unknowns’ when dealing with a job of this size. I like to call it ‘The Snoopy Factor’ – intangibles that seem to take up more and more of your time. In every area of our work, we get more calls and more information requests than you would otherwise expect, mainly because MetLife is such a well-known household name and this is such a high-profile offering. We have even established oversight teams that identify weak spots in our work and coordinate activities across all departments, making sure that we’re all working along the same lines.
A large part of my job is dealing with the financials. This company has to pay more attention to regulations like US Gaap, but now we must present our financials in an open and transparent manner so that Wall Street can effectively analyze and draw its own conclusions on MetLife. This has meant changing the entire company philosophy on financials, which has been a huge culture shock. We saw the need to recruit new talent, develop fresh accounting systems and bring in US Gaap experts in order to reach the accounting standards now expected of a large listed company. It has been my job to tell the financial controllers how Wall Street would view the revamped financials.
I also produce a quarterly financials supplement for the analysts and institutions, that sets all the details out in a clear and coherent way. By consulting with people on Wall Street, I’ve been able to refine and improve the supplement, making it easier for investors and analysts to understand exactly what we’re doing and why.
Keeping the Street updated is only half of my communications role, however. An increasing amount of my time is devoted to internal matters, briefing the executives on the projects we’re working on and reporting on how the company is being perceived by the financial community. Many of these executives have been mutual people all their lives, so education has been key to developing their understanding of how Wall Street works. I’m fortunate to enjoy strong management support for what I’m doing. The chairman has a Wall Street background and he has a good management team surrounding him who realize that, however well we’re doing, there will always still be room for improvement.
This is by far the hardest job I’ve ever done and I have found myself juggling many different responsibilities. It’s been non-stop for a few months now and I feel as though I could really do with a break. People say that it’ll be another couple of months before things start to settle down a bit, but I don’t really expect it to get any easier when MetLife goes public, as a listed company generates a whole new set of demands and requirements for the investor relations professional.
The job currently involves a lot of early mornings and late nights in the office, though we try to organize dinner meetings to relax and catch up with what everybody else in the company is doing. But this has been a truly brilliant challenge for me. The people I work with have been real partners and that has made my job a lot easier. I was under no illusions when I took this job – I knew it would be difficult, and at the moment I have a lot of deadlines to meet. Despite this, I’m still enjoying myself immensely and even looking to developments beyond the IPO.
Planning ahead
I have started to plan the changes my department will undertake to adapt to life as a large listed company. I foresee three or four people in institutional IR and developing our shareholder services office to deal with the demands of both private and institutional investors. These people will benefit from the back-up provided by ChaseMellon, who have hundreds of people working on this project behind the scenes.
This company is well prepared and in good shape for the IPO. Adopting a Wall Street perspective hasn’t been easy but MetLife has been moving in the right direction for some time now.
Despite the hours, the deadlines and the heavy workload, I really enjoy what I’m doing here. And most importantly, I always make sure I’m able to make time to relax with my family.’
