Canada – Manulife has renewed and expanded its partnership with Microsoft through a new five-year agreement aimed at accelerating the insurer’s transformation into an AI-powered organisation.
Under the expanded collaboration, Manulife will adopt Microsoft 365 E7 Frontier Suite capabilities, including broader deployment of Microsoft 365 Copilot to more than 30,000 employees. The company will also implement Microsoft Agent 365, a platform designed to govern, monitor, and secure AI agents across enterprise operations.
“Our partnership with Microsoft is a critical enabler of Manulife’s continued evolution into a truly AI-driven organisation,” said Shamus Weiland, Chief Technology & Operations Officer, Manulife. “Adopting the Microsoft Frontier Suite represents the next phase of that transformation, giving us the trusted foundation to advance AI across our global operations with confidence. It also provides the scale, security, stability and intelligence we need to accelerate innovation and embed AI responsibly across the franchise.”
As part of the agreement, Microsoft will continue to support Manulife’s enterprise AI platform, which is currently in pilot. The platform is intended to help the company’s developers and data scientists build, deploy, and manage AI and agentic solutions while adhering to governance standards covering quality, security, and cost efficiency.
The initiative will leverage Microsoft Azure and Microsoft Foundry, providing tools ranging from citizen development capabilities to model fine-tuning and monitoring. Microsoft Agent 365 will also serve as a centralised registry for AI agents, allowing Manulife to oversee how AI agents operate across the organisation while strengthening governance, observability, and risk management.
“As AI becomes more deeply embedded across our business, responsible innovation has to be built into how we operate — not treated as a separate layer of oversight,” said Jodie Wallis, Global Chief AI Officer, Manulife. “For Manulife, that means giving our teams the clarity, controls and confidence to use AI in ways that are secure, transparent and aligned to our Responsible AI Principles. By strengthening how we govern and monitor AI across the enterprise, we can move with greater speed and discipline while continuing to earn the trust of our customers, colleagues and communities.”
The company highlighted several AI applications already in use. These include a sales enablement tool that provides personalised advisor insights and has been rolled out from Singapore to multiple markets, a generative AI-powered underwriting support tool called Quick Quote used by John Hancock in the United States, and customer service solutions that support more than 110 million calls annually across North America. The latter is being expanded into Asia using Azure-based knowledge tools that provide source-backed responses with confidence scores.
Manulife also said it has deployed AI-powered agents and workflows across several business functions, where they assist employees in accessing information, software development, technology design, and IT operations.
The company reported that developers using AI-assisted and autonomous development tools have increased productivity by 30%, supported in part by GitHub Copilot. Manulife said the technology has enabled faster software design, development, and deployment, including rebuilding its mortgage renewal application within weeks.
Beyond its engineering teams, Manulife is extending AI tools across the broader workforce to improve productivity and customer service. The company expects AI initiatives to generate more than US$1 billion in enterprise value by 2027, having already achieved US$300 million by the end of 2025 through productivity and efficiency improvements.
“Our longstanding partnership with Manulife has always been grounded in trust, innovation and a shared commitment to responsible transformation,” said Matt Milton, President, Microsoft Canada. “We are proud to be Manulife’s trusted partner in the agentic era, helping empower employees with Microsoft 365 Copilot and scale AI responsibly with the governance and security of Microsoft Agent 365. We look forward to continuing our work together as Manulife turns AI into practical value and better outcomes for customers around the world.”
