MetLife Inc. will pay a $1 million fine to Massachusetts in its first regulatory settlement after the insurer failed to pay 13,500 people their pension benefits, the Wall Street Journal reported. The big New York insurer disclosed almost exactly one year ago that it had failed to adequately search for beneficiaries of private-sector pension plans for which it had taken on responsibility. Instead, it designated the people as “permanently unresponsive” after a couple of unanswered letters and booked as profit the money that should have been paid out. Some retirees were owed money from as far back as the 1990s, with amounts averaging less than $150 a month. Massachusetts Secretary of the Commonwealth William F. Galvin said in an interview that the fine follows a probe covering hundreds of retirees in the state. A MetLife spokeswoman on Tuesday said that the insurer “self-identified and self-reported” the problem to regulators and overhauled its search process for locating beneficiaries. It has said it is paying interest to beneficiaries on their overdue money. MetLife said that it is continuing to cooperate with an investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission, an examination by New York’s Department of Financial Services and some other inquiries.
