Manulife: AI efforts
Manulife is the world's most AI-mature life insurer — #1 life insurer for two years running and #3 overall in the 2026 Evident AI Index. It has rolled generative AI to its entire ~37,000-person workforce via ChatMFC, automated life underwriting with MAUDE and John Hancock's Quick Quote, and reports about $300M of realized AI value. Part of InsureBench's overview of AI in insurance; every figure is sourced.
Where Manulife ranks on AI
Manulife is #3 overall and the #1-ranked life insurer in the 2026 Evident AI Index for Insurance — the second year running it has topped the life category — behind only Allianz and AXA, and also #1 in Canada and in the index's AI Leadership pillar.1
Manulife reports roughly $300M of realized AI value by the end of 2025 and targets more than $1B by 2027, with its AI talent pool up 41% year-on-year and more deployed use cases disclosed than any other insurer in the index.1
global insurers
The AI build-out, 2024–2026
From a workforce-wide assistant to automated underwriting and an agentic enterprise platform.
AIDA underwriting algorithm
Manulife's Canadian automated underwriting engine (later MAUDE) begins — an early bet on AI in life underwriting.2
GenAI underwriting & sales tools in Asia
A GenAI underwriting assistant and a sales-enablement tool launch across Asia; Singapore scales to 2,000+ agents.3
ChatMFC reaches 100% of the workforce
Manulife's proprietary gen-AI assistant rolls out company-wide with 75%+ engagement.4
Six Responsible AI Principles
Manulife publishes its responsible-AI principles at the Reuters Momentum AI Summit.5
Adaptive ML for agentic AI
Manulife selects Adaptive ML as the reinforcement-learning engine to fine-tune specialist models on its enterprise AI platform.6
John Hancock "Quick Quote" + MAUDE upgrade
A reasoning-based GenAI underwriting tool cuts preliminary assessment from ~1 day to ~15 minutes; MAUDE auto-processes 50%+ of eligible applications.7
#1 life insurer, #3 overall
Manulife retains the top life-insurer spot and rises to #3 overall in the Evident AI Index.1
Inside the programme
A workforce-wide assistant, automated life underwriting, and an agentic platform layer.
ChatMFC
A proprietary gen-AI assistant deployed to the entire ~37,000-person workforce, with engagement above 75%.4
MAUDE & Quick Quote
MAUDE auto-processes 50%+ of eligible Canadian applications (approvals in minutes); John Hancock's Quick Quote cuts preliminary assessment to ~15 minutes.7
Enterprise AI platform
Manulife selected Akka to operationalise agentic AI and Adaptive ML as its reinforcement-learning engine to fine-tune specialist models.8
Contact-centre AI
Agent-assist (summaries, lookups) supports over 110M annual calls on AWS Amazon Connect, trimming average handle time.9
"We're proud to be named the number one life insurer for AI maturity for the second year in a row — and are now a top-three company overall."
Phil Witherington, President & CEO, Manulife — Jun 20261Scale with a life-insurance duty of care
Manulife pairs the industry's broadest gen-AI rollout with a published set of six Responsible AI Principles — emphasising governance, explainability, freedom from bias, and human agency — first shared publicly in May 2025.
In life underwriting, where a model's decision affects a person's coverage, that human-accountable boundary is exactly what an insurance AI benchmark measures.
- 6 principles — governance, safety, explainability, human agency
- ~200 data scientists / ML engineers embedded globally
- +41% year-on-year AI talent growth
- Investing in AI since 2016, per its Global Chief AI Officer
Why this matters for benchmarking
Manulife is automating life underwriting decisions directly — MAUDE handling half of eligible applications, Quick Quote compressing assessment to minutes. The more those decisions are model-driven, the more it matters whether the model is right. That's what InsureBench measures; see the methodology.
Sources
- PR Newswire / Manulife — #1 life insurer for AI maturity, 2nd year (Jun 16, 2026). prnewswire.com
- Fintech.ca — Manulife's AI-powered life insurance approvals (MAUDE, Jan 29, 2026). fintech.ca
- PR Newswire / Manulife — GenAI innovations across Asia (Oct 2, 2024). prnewswire.com
- PR Newswire / Manulife — GenAI rolled out to 100% of workforce (Mar 6, 2025). prnewswire.com
- PR Newswire / Manulife — Responsible AI Principles at Reuters Momentum (May 23, 2025). prnewswire.com
- PR Newswire / Manulife — Adaptive ML reinforcement-learning engine (Dec 22, 2025). prnewswire.com
- PR Newswire / John Hancock — "Quick Quote" GenAI underwriting tool (Jan 29, 2026). prnewswire.com
- PR Newswire / Manulife — Akka to operationalise agentic AI (Mar 10, 2026). prnewswire.com
- RBC — Manulife's AI flywheel (Dec 11, 2025). rbc.com