There are numerous smaller integration projects within each businessunit as well. Tony Colyandro, Met's vice president and CIO ofbroker/dealers and investments, and his staff are combining front-,middle- and back-office functions of all four broker/dealers. They areseeking economies of scale and looking for the best solutions withineach of the brokers' existing systems.

Hammersmith has invested $120 million over several years to createself-service portals called MyBenefits.com and MetDental that willconnect legacy systems for institutional clients. Richard Small, vicepresident and CIO of MetLife Auto and Home, has invested $40 millionto integrate the personal lines of business (worth $1.1 billion inpremiums) acquired from St. Paul Cos. in 1999. These pro- jects inspecific business units and across the enterprise will continue forsome time.

"We still have a lot of work to be done. We have a lot of legacysystems that still need to be supported that we mask with middleware,"Sheinheit says. "Today, we're doing a lot of front-ending things,creating a veneer that makes it look as if everything's integrated.But over time, we're going to get all of the pieces actuallyintegrated."

Meta Group's Johnston says we won't see a truly integrated MetLife, orany other insurance company, until at least 2006 or 2007. Still,MetLife's long-term investment in integration is exemplary, he says."MetLife put a stake in the ground and made the decision that they'regoing to have to do this or be ineffective," he says. "That shows agreat degree of moral courage on their part to invest in somethingwhere they may not necessarily see a real return on their investmentin 12 or 18 months."

For Cavanagh, the enduring nature of MetLife's integration efforts isboth logical and welcome. "Integration is an ongoing challenge becausewe're always going to be adding new business, and people are going tokeep coming up with new ideas in our existing business," he says."We're going to find more and more things that belong together."