Manulife Selects Akka to Operationalize Agentic AI within its Enterprise AI Platform
MWN-AI** Summary
Manulife Financial Corporation has partnered with Akka to enhance its enterprise AI platform, focusing on the development of agentic AI—intelligent systems capable of understanding tasks, making decisions, and taking action. This strategic alliance, announced on March 10, 2026, marks a significant step in integrating AI into Manulife's critical workflows, thereby reinforcing its commitment to security, reliability, and performance in regulated environments.
Jodie Wallis, Manulife's Global Chief AI Officer, emphasized that trust underpins both their insurance and investment businesses and their AI strategies. The collaboration with Akka will bolster the company's ability to scale AI solutions that adhere to compliance and governance standards, crucial for maintaining operational integrity. The platform's beta phase aims to streamline the development process while embedding responsible AI practices within the infrastructure.
Akka brings over 15 years of experience in supporting enterprise-scale operations, making it an ideal partner for Manulife. Tyler Jewell, Akka’s CEO, highlighted the necessity of consistent engineering practices to build AI systems that businesses can rely on for positive outcomes. Manulife is dedicated to using AI responsibly, as reflected in its Responsible AI Principles.
Moreover, the partnership is expected to yield over $1 billion in enterprise value by 2027, with a focus on enhancing efficiency across its operations. Manulife’s AI solutions, developed under this framework, prioritize safety, human accountability, and energy efficiency, which aligns with the company’s broader sustainability goals. This collaboration not only aims to enhance customer and organizational safety but also positions Manulife as a leader in AI innovation within the financial services sector.
MWN-AI** Analysis
Manulife's partnership with Akka for the operationalization of agentic AI marks a pivotal moment in its ongoing digital transformation. This collaboration is set to enhance Manulife's Enterprise AI Platform by embedding reliability and security into its AI solutions, addressing the stringent regulatory environment of the financial services industry.
From an investment perspective, this strategic move is likely to yield significant returns. Manulife's commitment to leveraging AI is reinforced by its expectations to generate over $1 billion in enterprise value by 2027, with efficiency improvements contributing notably to this figure. The integration of Akka’s resilient architecture strengthens the platform’s governance and operational agility, providing a robust foundation for scaling AI applications effectively.
Investors should keenly watch Manulife as it positions itself as a leader in AI maturity within the life insurance sector. Its strong focus on customer trust, compliance, and responsible AI practices aligns well with current market trends favoring ethical and sustainable technology practices. This significantly reduces risk, making Manulife a potentially attractive investment.
Moreover, the ongoing beta testing of its AI platform suggests that Manulife is keen on immediate operationalization, which could lead to early advantages in the market. Companies with advanced AI capabilities are anticipated to outperform in terms of efficiency and customer satisfaction, crucial factors in today’s competitive landscape.
Given these elements, stakeholders should consider a bullish outlook on Manulife’s stock. The firm is not only enhancing operational efficiency but also adapting to evolving consumer expectations through innovative, technology-driven solutions. As the landscape for AI within financial services evolves, Manulife's proactive strategy positions it well for future growth, making it a compelling choice for investors looking to capitalize on the AI-driven transformation in finance.
**MWN-AI Summary and Analysis is based on asking OpenAI to summarize and analyze this news release.
Canada NewsWire
Akka to provide a secure and scalable software foundation to build trusted AI-powered business applications
TORONTO and SAN FRANCISCO, March 10, 2026 /CNW/ - Manulife announced today that Akka has been selected as its latest partner supporting the development of its enterprise agentic AI platform. By bringing Akka's durable and highly available runtime into the ecosystem, Manulife will strengthen the platform's security, reliability, and performance as it embeds AI into critical workflows and expands adoption across the organization.
"Our insurance and investment businesses are built on trust, and that same principle guides our approach to AI," said Jodie Wallis, Global Chief AI Officer for Manulife. "As we explore technologies that can help us scale reliable, compliant and resilient AI systems, solutions like Akka illustrate how enterprises can build and operate agentic systems with the speed, predictability, and governance required in highly regulated environments. Their focus on orchestration, safety, operational SLAs, and system reliability reflects exactly the kind of rigor that supports responsible AI and consistent customer value."
Manulife's enterprise AI platform, now in beta testing, provides a secure, integrated foundation for building and deploying AI agents – intelligent systems that understand tasks, help make decisions, and take action to support customers and colleagues. The platform streamlines development, reduces operational costs, and enables high volume, business critical AI solutions, all while embedding strong governance, safeguards, and Responsible AI practices.
"Partnering with a leader like Manulife is an honour for us, and it's a testament to our 15 years of enterprise scale and regulated industry experience," said Tyler Jewell, CEO of Akka. "The Manulife team demonstrates the rare understanding of what it really takes to deliver agentic AI on a global scale. Without consistent engineering practices that address a complex and continually changing set of environment factors, AI systems, which are inherently random, will not be trusted to deliver business outcomes."
Manulife's partnership with Akka reinforces its commitment to Responsible AI and sustainability as outlined in its publicly available Responsible AI Principles. By leveraging Akka's solution for its AI platform, Manulife will:
- Prioritize customer, colleague, and organizational safety through sound delivery and governance processes.
- Design energy-efficient AI solutions that require less infrastructure to run and maintain.
- Build AI solutions that are explainable and reliable, while maintaining the appropriate human accountability for decision making.
"Manulife is embedding AI across nearly every part of our business while equipping our colleagues with the capabilities to design, operate, and scale solutions," said Shamus Weiland, Global Chief Information Officer at Manulife. "Akka provides a secure, scalable software foundation to support high volumes of business applications to accelerate meaningful value creation across our franchise. This partnership is rooted in our Responsible AI Principles, with a strong focus on governance, human oversight, and safety, as we advance toward becoming an AI-powered organization."
In December 2025, Manulife announced that Adaptive ML would provide the reinforcement-learning-powered engine for finetuning and optimizing models within its enterprise AI platform.
In June 2025, Manulife was named the #1 life insurance company for AI maturity in the inaugural Evident AI Index for Insurance, reinforcing the company's commitment to innovation and customer-centric solutions. Manulife has been actively investing in and scaling AI capabilities since 2016. In the past three years, the firm has significantly increased the value enabled through advanced analytics and AI by expanding its AI solutions portfolio and increasing efficiency through data and AI platform investments1, all driven by the company's responsible AI framework. Manulife expects AI to generate $1 billion+ of enterprise value by 2027, with roughly one-fifth expected to come from improved efficiency.
To learn more about Manulife's AI progress, visit AI @ Manulife.
__________________________ (1) The benefits from our global digital, customer leadership initiatives include expense saves, growth absorption, revenue benefits (margin businesses) and new business CSM growth (insurance).
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. 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.
About Akka
Akka is the platform to create agentic AI systems that continuously build trust and never fail. Used by industry giants and digital native enterprises alike, Akka provides the safe, scalable, and sovereign backbone for AI-native systems. Learn more at akka.io.
Media contact
Manulife:
Gina Simonis
gsimonis@manulife.com
617-840-4794
Akka:
Nichols Communications for Akka
Ray George
+1 650 922 3825
ray@nicholscomm.com
SOURCE Manulife Financial Corporation
FAQ**
How does the partnership between Manulife Financial Corporation MFC and Akka enhance the security and reliability of AI systems within Manulife’s enterprise AI platform?
In what specific ways will Akka's solutions help Manulife Financial Corporation MFC achieve its Responsible AI Principles and improve governance processes for AI deployment?
What metrics will Manulife Financial Corporation MFC use to measure the success of embedding AI into critical workflows and achieving the projected $1 billion+ in enterprise value by 2027?
How does the integration of Akka's technology align with Manulife Financial Corporation MFC’s commitment to sustainability and energy-efficient AI solutions?
**MWN-AI FAQ is based on asking OpenAI questions about Manulife Financial Corporation (TSXC: MFC:CC).
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