Manulife bets on partnerships to scale AI across insurance operations
Manulife is moving beyond early AI adoption into a new phase: building enterprise-wide systems through strategic partnerships. The Canada-based insurer, parent company of John Hancock, announced a partnership with Akka, an agentic AI platform, as part of a broader effort to deploy AI agents across underwriting, claims, customer service and investment research.
The shift reflects a widening gap between insurers experimenting with AI and those racing to scale it. Jodie Wallis, global chief AI officer at Manulife, said the industry faces a common challenge: "the need to accelerate speed of deployments while maintaining or improving risk posture."
Why partnerships matter now
Scaling AI in insurance requires more than technology. It demands governance, compliance and operational reliability in a highly regulated industry. Manulife chose Akka specifically for its strength in system reliability, orchestration and consistent performance across high-volume environments.
"Akka provides a durable, highly available runtime that strengthens the platform's security, reliability and performance as AI becomes embedded in mission-critical workflows," Wallis said.
The partnership reflects Manulife's broader strategy. The company previously partnered with Adaptive ML to support reinforcement learning-based model optimization. Each partnership addresses a specific capability gap rather than building everything internally.
The enterprise AI agent platform
Manulife is currently in beta testing an enterprise agentic AI platform where AI agents handle specific tasks - analyzing information, understanding context and taking action. The system is designed to help colleagues work faster while reducing development time and operational costs.
Responsible AI principles are embedded throughout. Every agent is built with governance controls, safeguards and compliance mechanisms designed to operate consistently across global markets.
"Responsible AI is embedded into every phase of our AI lifecycle, from design and development to deployment and ongoing monitoring," Wallis said.
The financial target
Manulife expects over $1 billion in AI-driven gains by 2027. The company structured its platform to avoid repeated reinvention: AI practitioners can build, reuse and govern systems at scale, with local team contributions fed back into the platform for others to use.
Wallis noted that as AI moves from supporting better decisions to taking action within core operations, the stakes for reliability and governance rise sharply. "By enabling AI agents at scale, we can accelerate decision-making, streamline complex processes and enhance customer experience across the enterprise," she said.
The partnership signals what other insurers may pursue as they move beyond initial AI pilots. Companies seeking to scale face a choice: build all capabilities in-house, or partner with specialists who can deliver specific strengths - security, orchestration, governance - at production scale.
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