over 135,000 participating dentist locations nationwide while the dental HMO network included more than 13,000 participating dentist locations in California, Florida and Texas. MetLife also administers dental continuing education program for dentists and allied health care professionals, which are recognized by the American Dental Association (ADA) and the Academy of General Dentistry (AGD). Disability MetLife provides disability products for individuals as well as employee and association groups who receive them through their employer. For individuals, the company's individual disability income insurance can replace a portion of lost income if an individual is unable to work due to sickness or injury. MetLife offers several individual disability income policies, including MetLife Income Guard, OMNI Advantage, OMNI Essential, Business Overhead Expense, and Buy-Sell. The policy options provided by the company vary in terms of eligibility and the provided coverage. For groups, MetLife offers short term disability insurance and long term disability insurance. Short term disability insurance is structured to replace a portion of an individual's income during the initial weeks of a disabling illness or accident. Long term disability Insurance serves to replace a portion of an individual's income during an extended period of a disabling illness or accident. The company also maintains an absence management product which allows employers to track and manage both planned and unplanned employee absences. The product, which MetLife calls MetLife Total Absence Management, is structured for businesses with 1,000 or more employees. Annuities MetLife is among the largest providers of annuities in the world, recording $22.4 billion in sales during 2009. MetLife offers annuities which consist of fixed annuities, variable annuities, deferred annuities and immediate annuities. In 1921, MetLife was the first company to issue a group annuity contract. More recently in 2004, it was the first insurer to introduce a longevity insurance product. As of December 31, 2009, MetLife globally managed group annuity assets of $60 billion with $34 billion of transferred pension liabilities and provided benefit payments to over 600,000 annuitants per month. Auto & Home MetLife Auto & Home is the brand name for MetLife's nine affiliate personal lines insurance companies. Collectively these companies offer personal lines property and casualty insurance policies in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The flagship company in the MetLife Auto & Home group, Metropolitan Property and Casualty Insurance Company, was founded in 1972. MetLife Auto & Home companies presently have over 2.7 million active policies and