Manulife has expanded its partnership with Microsoft under a five-year agreement aimed at deploying artificial intelligence across its global operations while strengthening oversight of AI agents.
The financial services company will adopt Microsoft 365 E7 Frontier Suite, expand Microsoft 365 Copilot to more than 30,000 employees, and implement Microsoft Agent 365 as a central system for registering, monitoring, and managing AI agents.
Agent 365 will give Manulife a single interface for observing how AI agents operate across the organization, supporting governance, security, risk management, and compliance controls.
“Our partnership with Microsoft is a critical enabler of Manulife’s continued evolution into a truly AI-powered organization,” said Shamus Weiland, chief technology and operations officer at 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.”
Microsoft is also supporting Manulife’s global enterprise AI platform, which is currently being piloted. The platform will allow data scientists and developers to build, deploy, and manage generative and agentic AI applications using shared standards for security, quality, and cost.
The system uses Microsoft Azure and Microsoft Foundry for functions ranging from application development and model fine-tuning to performance monitoring.
“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 at 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.”
Manulife said it is already using Microsoft-backed AI tools in sales, underwriting, customer service, software development, and IT operations.
Its Sales Enablement tool, initially launched in Singapore and later expanded to other markets, uses Microsoft Foundry models to generate personalized information for insurance advisers.
John Hancock, Manulife’s US business, has also introduced Quick Quote, a generative AI tool that assists with preliminary life insurance underwriting assessments.
Azure-based knowledge tools are being used to support more than 110 million customer calls annually in North America and are being introduced in Asia. These systems provide agents with source-backed answers and confidence scores.
Manulife said assisted and autonomous AI tools have increased developer productivity by 30%. GitHub Copilot was also used in rebuilding the company’s mortgage-renewal application, which it said was completed within weeks.
The company expects AI initiatives to generate more than $1 billion in enterprise value by 2027. It reported $300 million in accumulated value as of the end of 2025, although the projection remains subject to implementation, regulatory, and operational risks.
“Our longstanding partnership with Manulife has always been grounded in trust, innovation and a shared commitment to responsible transformation,” said Matt Milton, president of 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.”
