MetLife Offers Income Inflation Protection

Metropolitan Life Insurance Company is introducing an income annuity feature that can protect purchasers against rapidly rising prices.[@@]

Metropolitan Life, a unit of MetLife Inc., New York, is selling the feature through its Guaranteed Income Program, which helps employees convert defined contribution plan assets or other retirement plan assets into streams of retirement income.

Employees who generate retirement income using immediate income annuities can use the inflation protection feature to tie annuity income to the performance of the U.S. Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers, according to MetLife.

Annuity income payments will never go down as a result of use of the feature, but payments will rise as fast as the CPI-U benchmark rises, MetLife says.