MetLife is in talks with a major pension provider to integrate its group life and income protection products with the auto enrolment of the SME market beginning later this year.
Declining to name the provider, Tom Gaynor, employee benefits director at MetLife, said: "Partnering with a pension provider would make us an integral part of auto enrolment.
"It will provide an incentive to both strengthen protection and an opportunity to look after those coming into the market for the first time, when perhaps others in their company already have benefits.
"Group life and group IP are natural bed fellows with pension products and auto enrolment is a good point for general education on benefits."
Gaynor added that MetLIfe had two strands it had identified for growth; large multinationals, particularly outposts of US companies and the protection and growth of its large SME book.
Gaynor said: "For large group business we can leverage our size.
"Financial service firms, for example, often have a lot of people in one place such as the city or Canary Wharf. We are able to take on significant exposure for event limits, we have gone up to £750m."
"This is something our competitors can't do and it gives the advisers with larger clients an option to take to clients, where perhaps they would have struggled."
