Manulife Financial Corporation has announced the launch of its proprietary enterprise AI platform, marking a significant shift from isolated AI use cases toward unified, governed deployment across the Toronto-headquartered financial services group's global operations.

The platform, unveiled on 13 October 2026, provides a common foundation for teams across Manulife to build, deploy, and manage AI solutions consistently. By centralising development and governance, the platform is designed to enable Manulife to scale AI across markets while accommodating the unique requirements of different business units and jurisdictions.

Scaling Business Value Through Centralised AI Governance

Manulife expects the platform to deliver $1 billion in cumulative enterprise AI value by 2027, 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.

Phil Witherington, President and CEO of Manulife, described the platform as a critical step toward the company's strategic priority to become AI-powered across core operations. "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," Witherington said. "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."

Accelerating Development Through Reuse and Embedded Controls

The platform allows teams to reuse AI use cases that have already been reviewed and approved, reducing development time. Teams can access security, risk and governance controls embedded within the platform.

Jodie Wallis, Global Chief Artificial Intelligence Officer at Manulife, said: "AI is moving from isolated use cases to capabilities that will reshape how financial services are delivered. 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."

Three solutions are being integrated onto the Enterprise AI Platform:

• Singapore Sales Agent: Helps sales teams find information quickly, answer questions, and prepare for customer conversations by providing AI-powered support in real time.
• Intelligent Document Processing (IDP): A shared AI service that automatically reads documents and extracts key information, reducing manual data entry and processing time.
• 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.

Responsible AI and Energy Efficiency

All solutions developed on the platform adhere to Manulife's Responsible AI Principles, which are designed to ensure AI is deployed safely, ethically, and transparently while maintaining human accountability and supporting decision-making.

Shamus Weiland, Chief Technology & Operations Officer at Manulife, said: "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. 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 supports efficient, scalable AI development through the use of right-sized models where appropriate, matching the size of the model to the task to reduce cost and energy use.

Recognition and Market Position

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