As an Investor
MIM’s Approach to Sustainable Investing
MIM’s investment teams aim to deliver strong, risk-adjusted returns by building tailored portfolio solutions for clients across core asset teams, including fixed income, private capital and real estate.
As a result, MIM’s investment analysts, asset originators and portfolio managers are tasked with building and managing resilient investment portfolios. MIM manages most of MetLife’s GA investment portfolio according to MetLife’s investment strategy and is a top institutional investment manager globally for third-party clients, with a growing market share.
MIM’s approach leverages both its traditional investing and sustainability expertise to manage risk and drive performance. Ongoing dialogue with companies and issuers helps raise awareness of prudent business practices for the long term and promotes data transparency and standardization. MIM believes that capital markets benefit from more and improved information from which investment decisions can be made.
MIM’s approach to investing begins with an assessment of financially material risks and opportunities as part of its fundamental, disciplined due diligence and monitoring processes.
Financially material ESG factors and insights, along with traditional investment risk and opportunity assessments, are incorporated in a manner consistent with investment strategies, as are deemed relevant and applicable. MIM maintains policies and brochures that guide and communicate its sustainable investment approach.
Visit our website for MIM’s policies and brochures.
Engagement
Engagement with company leadership provides MIM’s investment analysts with an opportunity to better understand financially material, relevant risk factors and improve data transparency. MIM’s investment analysts regularly interact and engage in discussions with a company’s senior management or other relevant stakeholders throughout the initial due diligence process and as part of the portfolio monitoring process.
Direct engagement with an issuer or company’s senior leadership is a fundamental part of MIM’s research process. MIM’s engagement activity often includes conversations about business model resilience and responsiveness to financially material ESG factors. These conversations help with identifying opportunities to deploy capital in a way that manages risk, maximizes performance, meets customer and shareholder expectations and enhances long-term value in a changing market.
Real Estate
MetLife has been involved in real estate since 1878, supporting and financing solutions in the real estate sector that help manage risk, drive innovation, improve performance and create sustainable investment returns and outcomes.
MIM ranks as the largest real estate investment manager globally,1 providing debt and equity origination and institutional investment management capabilities across offices in the U.S. and international markets, including Chile, Japan, Korea, Mexico and the U.K.
MIM’s direct engagement with property managers, building engineers, investment partners and borrowers is ingrained into the long-term management of MIM’s real estate investments.
MIM offers energy reduction and efficiency strategies, procurement of on-site and off-site renewables and ongoing dialogue with stakeholders across the properties MetLife and MIM own and control. Between 2019 and 2023, financed emissions for MetLife’s GA investment portfolio real estate equity investments declined by 9%.2
MIM makes progress through the MetZeroTM Carbon CascadeTM approach, which attempts to systematically manage risk, maximize asset and environmental performance, and promote strong returns in the real estate properties in which it invests and the properties under its operational control, including on behalf of MetLife and third-party clients.
Through a joint venture with New York Common, MetLife invested in Splash Apartments, a Portland, Oregon multi-family property that has earned recognition from the U.S. Department of Energy, American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy and Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance for its highly efficient approach to water heating. The property features an electric heat pump water heater that promotes load flexibility, allowing it to use energy during off-peak hours and distribute hot water later during peak hours, thereby cutting energy use intensity by half compared to similar buildings.3
realestate researchandinsights
Agricultural Lending
MetLife and MIM’s Agricultural Finance Group clients have provided long-term debt capital for farmers, ranchers, agribusinesses, forest products facilities and timberland owners for more than a century.4 MIM has grown to be the largest U.S. agricultural mortgage lender outside of government-sponsored enterprises.5
MIM has developed in-house solutions to collect sustainability-related data from borrowers at the time of loan origination to expand the universe of decision-useful information relevant to agricultural finance.
MIM seeks to work closely with clients on managing risk and creating strong risk-adjusted returns by considering attributes specific to each industry segment, such as borrower character and corporate governance, labor practices, animal welfare, water availability and quality, and other topics and concerns.
MetLife’s commitment to natural capital is longstanding. MetLife’s GA investment portfolio includes investments with family and institutional borrowers that support habitat and biodiversity education.
One such investment is with Timberland Investment Resources (TIR), a MetLife borrower which adopted a Winged BiodiversityTM Program to enhance habitat for birds, bats and pollinators across its U.S. timberland portfolio. The program is guided by a panel of experts from the public sector, academia and conservation groups that assist TIR with enacting best practices to support species diversity and forest health, while educating the public on the role of managed forests in a broader ecosystem.
Investing in Biodiversity and Nature
MetLife and MIM are proud to source investments that seek to generate competitive risk-adjusted returns and long-term value while also creating nature-positive outcomes that benefit people and the planet. This includes managing sustainable forestry, installing drip irrigation for crops and supporting on-site pollinator projects. MetLife’s GA real estate investment portfolio includes 13 properties with beehives.
MetLife’s Sustainable Financing Framework
MetLife’s Sustainable Financing Framework (Framework) facilitates alignment of our business and investment activities to generate long-term value for our investment portfolio, shareholders and other stakeholders. The Framework guides our issuances of green, social and sustainable bonds, term loans, preferred stock, subordinated notes and funding agreements by MetLife, Inc. and its subsidiaries, including Metropolitan Life Insurance Company and Metropolitan Tower Life Insurance Company.
As part of the Framework, MetLife has committed to publishing an annual Sustainable Financing Report that includes a summary of outstanding MetLife Sustainable Financing issuances, including issuance date, size, maturity date, currency and format. MetLife publishes this report, which includes a summary of the allocation of amounts equal to net proceeds of the outstanding issuances, as described in the Framework, on our website.
