Pay As You Go - ' Page 3'

So far, this strategy has been successful. Initial funding was completed by the end of 2000. By 2002, the first system integration of the customer information file was demonstrated. Now, two years later, all MetLife's new life insurance customers are in the central database and two life insurance customer file systems have been linked to the network. The company is working on entering new annuity, property and casualty insurance customers into the system. By about 2007, MetLife expects to have its CDI system for its most critical Individual Business units finished.

That is, of course, if the internal culture continues to cooperate. Because it is such a long-term project, with such a high price tag, when new managers are hired, Gourvitch finds that he has to rev up his education campaign all over again. On top of that, Gourvitch says, because MetLife is installing a system that at least for now is not producing discernible results, he tries to constantly publicize the milestones to show that the "building is being built." Static IT budgets during the past few years haven't helped. As a result, some managers have balked at funding CIF, trying to put it off until subsequent years. But in the end, Gourvitch says, they capitulate.

This is mainly because, as he expected, Benmosche's customer-centric mantra is taking hold as MetLife's financial performance improves. In 2003, with all its financial services offerings contributing—from banking to brokerage to insurance to institutional sales—MetLife's return on assets hit a ten-year high of 0.7 percent and its net income was up 38 percent over the year before. There's nothing like tangible benefits to jump-start cultural change.

"There's a sense, finally, that although we won't see returns from CIF for a few more years, this company has changed forever, and if you want to enjoy the rewards, you have to change with it," says Marzulli. "A lot of other financial service firms have elegant systems, but we're going to have data that is much cleaner and more useable than any of them."

That may not be enough. Despite Benmosche's attempt to remake MetLife, the company is still little more than a life insurance firm: These policies, sold directly to individuals or through corporate benefits plans, make up 74 percent of revenue and 83 percent of operating income. Unless MetLife successfully expands into other, more high-margin services, says Matt Nellans, an analyst at Morningstar who calls "MetLife rather unexciting as a newly public company," its growth is going to be unspectacular.

MetLife executives wouldn't necessarily disagree about what the company has to accomplish, but they would take issue with Nellans's pessimism. As they see it, their new database is their insurance policy against a bleak future.