Akka to provide a secure and scalable software foundation to build trusted AI-powered business applications
TORONTO and SAN FRANCISCO, March 10, 2026 -- 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.
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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
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