Manulife Launches Enterprise AI Platform to Scale AI Solutions and Deliver Business Value Across Global Operations

Unified platform helps teams build once, scale globally, guided by our Responsible AI Principles

TORONTO, Oct. 13, 2026 /CNW/ -- Manulife today announced the launch of its proprietary enterprise AI platform, marking a significant milestone in the company's journey to become AI-powered across its core operations. The platform provides a robust operating environment that enables teams across the enterprise to build, deploy and manage AI solutions consistently. By providing a common foundation for development and governance, it will allow Manulife to scale AI across markets while supporting the unique needs of different businesses and jurisdictions.

This launch marks the next stage of Manulife's AI evolution, moving beyond discrete use case solutions to a unified enterprise platform that enables repeatable, governed AI delivery at scale, guided by our Responsible AI Principles.

Driving enterprise value through scaled AI adoption

"We have already demonstrated that AI can deliver meaningful impact across Manulife, from improving experiences for customers, agents, and colleagues to driving measurable business value," said Phil Witherington, President and CEO, Manulife. "The platform positions us to move beyond individual solutions to a shared enterprise capability that encourages and enables teams around the world to innovate, collaborate, and scale AI responsibly. This is a critical next step toward our strategic priority to become a truly AI-powered organization."

By embedding AI across its businesses, platforms, and workflows, Manulife expects to generate $1 billion in cumulative enterprise AI value by 2027ⁱ, with $300 million achieved as of year-end 2025. This includes run-rate expense reductions, top-line revenue uplift from AI-powered workflows, fraud reduction, and growth absorption.

Enabling faster delivery through reuse and embedded controls

The platform provides a robust operating environment that will allow Manulife to deliver faster, scale AI across the enterprise and focus on the use case specific requirements. Teams can reuse use cases that have already been reviewed and approved, reducing development time and accelerating models through security, risk and governance controls.

"AI is moving from isolated use cases to capabilities that will reshape how financial services are delivered," said Jodie Wallis, Global Chief Artificial Intelligence Officer, Manulife. "Our AI Platform gives us the foundation to take proven ideas, scale them across our franchise, and create better experiences for customers, advisors and colleagues. The opportunity is not just to work faster, it is to remove friction, solve problems in new ways, and unlock value at a scale that was not previously possible."

Examples of success

Solutions being integrated onto the Enterprise AI Platform will help colleagues work more efficiently, automate manual tasks and access information more quickly. These include:

• Singapore Sales Agent: This tool helps sales teams find information quickly, answer questions and prepare for customer conversations. By providing AI-powered support in real time, the tool helps employees work more efficiently and deliver a better customer experience.
• Intelligent Document Processing (IDP): A shared AI service available to teams across Manulife that automatically reads documents and extracts key information. By reducing manual data entry and processing time, IDP improves efficiency, increases accuracy and helps teams make faster decisions.
• Quick Quote: Launched in the U.S., this AI-enabled solution simplifies and accelerates the preliminary life insurance assessment process. By automating key steps and delivering faster access to preliminary underwriting information, Quick Quote reduces manual effort, improves efficiency, and helps provide a more seamless experience for customers and advisors.

A responsible approach to AI

Manulife's AI strategy is designed to maintain human accountability, foster creativity and support decision-making. All solutions developed on the platform adhere to Manulife's Responsible AI Principles, seeking to ensure AI is deployed safely, ethically, and transparently.

"AI is creating new opportunities for innovation across Manulife, and our focus is on helping teams bring those ideas to life in a secure and responsible way," said Shamus Weiland, Chief Technology & Operations Officer at Manulife. "Our AI platform creates a strong, centralized foundation that empowers our developers and data scientists to build once and scale globally, while maintaining the highest standards of security, governance, and responsible AI."

The platform also supports efficient, scalable AI development, including the use of right-sized models where appropriate, matching the size of the model to the task to reduce cost and energy useⁱⁱ.

AI leadership

For two consecutive years, Manulife has been recognized as the number one life insurance company for AI maturity in the Evident AI Insurance Index. Manulife was also recognized as the top-ranked insurer in Canada, earned the number one position in the AI Leadership category, and placed third overall.

To learn more about Manulife's AI progress, visit AI @ Manulife.

Caution regarding forward-looking statements

This document contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the "safe harbour" provisions of Canadian provincial securities laws and the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 with respect to Manulife's use of its digital capabilities and the expected benefits it expects to realize from AI and its proprietary AI platform. Although we believe that the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are reasonable, such statements involve risks and uncertainties, and undue reliance should not be placed on such statements. Certain material factors or assumptions are applied in making forward-looking statements, and actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied in such statements. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations include but are not limited to general business and economic conditions; changes in laws and regulations with respect to the use of AI-enabled tools; our ability to execute our digital plans and to deploy future digital use cases; our ability to adapt products and services to the changing market; our ability to attract and retain key employees and our ability to protect our intellectual property and exposure to claims of infringement from others. Additional information about material risk factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations may be found in our most recent annual and interim reports and elsewhere in our filings with Canadian and U.S. securities regulators.

The forward-looking statements in this document are, unless otherwise indicated, stated as of the date hereof. We do not undertake to update any forward-looking statements, except as required by law.

About Manulife

Manulife Financial Corporation is a leading international financial services provider, headquartered in Toronto, Canada. Anchored in our ambition to be the number one choice for customers, we operate as Manulife across Canada and Asia, and primarily as John Hancock in the United States, providing financial advice, insurance and health solutions for individuals, groups and businesses. Through Manulife Wealth & Asset Management, we offer global investment solutions, financial advice, and retirement plan services to individuals, institutions, and retirement plan members worldwide. At the end of 2025, we had more than 37,000 employees, over 106,000 agents, and thousands of distribution partners, serving over 37 million customers with operations across 25 markets globally. We trade as 'MFC' on the Toronto, New York, and Philippine stock exchanges, and under '945' on the Hong Kong stock exchange. Not all offerings are available in all jurisdictions. For additional information, please visit manulife.com.

Media contact
Manulife:
Emily English
647-544-2800
[email protected]

SOURCE Manulife Financial Corporation