2024 was another outstanding year for Manulife. We delivered superior results, demonstrated continued progress against our strategic priorities, unlocked even greater value for shareholders, raised the bar with ambitious new financial targets, and continued to make lives better for our more than 36 million customers around the world.
This year was also an important one for me personally, as I announced my decision to retire. When I took the role as President and CEO seven years ago, I knew Manulife had incredible potential and I’m incredibly proud to say we are a fundamentally different company than we were in 2017.
Since then, we have defined our mission, articulated our values, launched our Impact Agenda, become a more digital, customer-centric leader in our industry, optimized our portfolio, accelerated growth in our highest potential businesses, delivered superior operating results, created a winning team and culture, and so much more. Today, we are one of the few truly global insurance and wealth and asset managers that is both a leader and at scale.
As a result, the ingredients are now in place to begin the next chapter for Manulife. We have incredible momentum, a strong foundation, and in Phil Witherington, we have a tremendous leader who will bring the business to new heights. While I’m incredibly proud to have led such a storied institution, this is the perfect time for me to pass the baton to Phil.
We’ve accomplished much of what we set out to achieve.
In 2017, we sat down to define our bold ambitions. We asked ourselves what industry leadership looked like and what we wanted our legacy to be as we strove to deliver exceptional value for shareholders and customers. I still have notes from those early meetings, and I’m proud to say we’ve delivered against the ambitions we set.
Can we significantly increase core return on equity (ROE)?
In 2024, core ROE was 16.4%, up from 11.3% in 2017.
Can we reduce long-term care (LTC) and Variable Annuity (VA) core earnings contributions from 24% to 15%?
LTC and VA now make up 10%.
Can we show consistent core earnings per share (EPS) growth of 10-12% per year?
In 2024, we increased core EPS by 11%, from last year despite the impact of Global Minimum Tax.
Can we drastically improve our relationship Net Promoter Score (NPS)?
We’ve achieved record NPS of 27 at year-end, up from 1 in 2017.
And can we do all of this while building a high-performing, highly engaged employee culture?
We’ve achieved top-quartile employee engagement scores for five consecutive years.
These were goals many called unattainable. But with our robust strategy, focus on execution, sustained performance, and world-class leadership, we’ve achieved almost all of what we set out to do.
At the end of 2024, we reported record insurance new business results for the full year, including 30%+ increases year-over-year across APE sales, new business CSM, and new business value.
We have strong momentum and will continue raising the bar.
We’re delivering superior shareholder value. In 2024, we announced a remarkable $5.4 billion reinsurance agreement with RGA, including $2.4 billion of LTC reserves, on the heels of two other historic transactions in less than twelve months. We have cumulatively reduced our LTC reserves by 18% and have proven our ability to transact on LTC blocks of different vintages. The latest transaction further validates our LTC assumptions and gives the market even greater confidence in our commitment to reshaping our portfolio to higher returns and lower risk.
Since 2018, we have freed up an expected $12 billion of capital through our portfolio optimization efforts, including an expected $2.8 billion from our reinsurance transactions closed or announced in 2024.
We’re accelerating growth in our highest potential businesses. In Asia, we are now a top three pan-Asian life insurer with substantial top-line growth in 2024 and a 27% increase in core earnings. Global Wealth and Asset Management (Global WAM) capped off the year with over $13 billion of net inflows, a 220-basis point increase in core EBITDA margin, and a 30% core earnings growth. And we delivered positive net flows over the 14 of the past 15 years, increasing Global WAM AUMA to more than $1 trillion.
We are embracing the power of digital and improving customer experience. We have 27 GenAI use cases in production, strengthening our position as industry leaders in using this transformative technology and creating efficiencies for our team and driving better outcomes for our customers. We have made significant progress toward our digital, customer leadership ambition, achieving record high Net Promoter Score and generating over $600 million of benefits from our digital initiatives globally, representing more than 3 times the benefitsfrom 2023.
In the US, we continue to lead the industry and innovate with behavioural insurance by collaborating with MIT AgeLab, expanding our GRAIL Galleri offering, and hosting our second Longer. Healthier. Better. Symposium.
And in Canada, we enhanced the Manulife Vitality program mobile app with more personalized health and wellness recommendations. Continuous improvements have resulted in a 9 percentage point increase in the app’s utilization year over year.
We are driving expense efficiency. Our global scale and expense discipline have enabled us to achieve an expense efficiency ratio of 44.8%, already meeting our medium-term target announced at Investor Day.
Our winning team and culture continue to be our long-term competitive advantage. Since 2019, we have maintained top-quartile employee engagement results against Gallup’s financial and insurance company benchmark. In 2024, our colleagues completed 1.1 million learning hours, volunteered 48,000 hours, and – through our employee giving and corporate match benefit – donated $7.6 million. These are true investments in the future of our company and communities.
This year, our colleagues and agents from around the world shared more than 300 stories of Better, exploring how they connect personally to our mission. You’ll see a few of these stories featured alongside this report, and I’m so proud of what they say about our collective commitment to embracing purpose to fuel performance for our customers.
And we’re raising the bar with ambitious targets. At our Investor Day in June, we recommitted to our medium-term targets and set some new ones: we increased our core ROE target to 18%+ by 2027, introduced a new target of $22 billion+ cumulative remittances between 2024 and 2027, and further improved our expense efficiency goal to <45% in the medium term. We are on track to achieve these ambitious targets while continuing to deliver on our strategic priorities.
I truly believe the best is still ahead of us.
I have known Phil for more than a decade. He is one of the first people I met at Manulife, and we quickly became partners in transforming our Asia business. When I became CEO, he was the clear choice for CFO and was one of the key partners in developing our transformation plans.
He is an amazing leader with a deep understanding of our business and industry, and together with our winning team around the world, he will help take Manulife to even greater heights.
Thank you for the honour of a lifetime.
It has been my honour to serve as Manulife’s President and CEO, and I am humbled to have had the opportunity to lead such a historic company and a tremendous team of colleagues.
I would like to thank our Board Chair Don Lindsay and our Board of Directors for their continued trust and support of our team. And to you, our shareholders and customers, thank you for the trust you place in us to deliver for your future and your families.
Thank you to the entire ELT for being one of the most amazing groups of people I’ve had the opportunity to work with in my career.
While I’m thrilled with the results we’ve achieved, what I will always be most proud of is the culture we’ve built together. Thank you to our more than 37,000 colleagues and 109,000 agents for their passion and commitment to our customers, mission, and values.
As I look to 2025, I have every confidence that Manulife will sustain the momentum we’ve worked so hard to achieve together.
