As wealth managers, banks and others in financial services consider how to use AI, the Canada-based group, which operates in Asia as well as the US and its home country, explains how far the AI wave has spread in its own operations.

Toronto-headquartered Manulife, which operates in a number of regions including Asia-Pacific, broadcast its digital efforts by announcing that more than three-quarters of its global workforce use generative AI.

Uses of GenAI include ChatMFC, Manulife’s proprietary GenAI assistant introduced in 2024. 

“AI is transformative, and it is creating efficiencies for how we work, create, and interact with one another,” Jodie Wallis, global chief analytics officer, Manulife, said. “By equipping our teams with GenAI tools, we’re enabling them to work smarter, move faster, and make a bigger impact. We’ve doubled our AI-driven impact by diversifying and expanding solutions, strengthening data and AI platforms, and practising responsible AI governance, proving that our teams see real value.”

As this news service has explained in a series of articles, AI use cases vary widely. Many of the steps for advisors at a private bank and wealth management firm involve pulling together disparate information, often supported by different tech stacks. This then needs to be synthesised to generate insights. Generative AI can quickly process all this, saving advisors hours of time. UBS chief executive Sergio Ermotti has said that AI could boost productivity and make jobs easier.

Manulife said it has made a multi-billion-dollar investment in its digital transformation including a cloud-based data and AI platform and scaled AI solutions. Besides ChatMFC, Manulife said it has developed a skills-building programme to “empower colleagues at all levels to understand, experiment with, and apply AI effectively.” It said that more than 35 GenAI use cases across Canada, the US, and Asia have been deployed to date, with an additional 70 GenAI use cases prioritised for deployment by the end of 2025. 

“AI is driving efficiency, fuelling growth, and strengthening our bottom line globally,” Karen Leggett, global chief marketing officer, Manulife, said. “By embedding AI at scale, we’re not just optimising operations – we’re empowering colleagues to deepen customer relationships, improving advisor connections, and unlocking new revenue streams.”

ChatGPT, the AI language recognition software, is being used at wealth managers, for example, to generate content such as client emails, marketing materials, business proposals, blogs and social media posts. Other use cases being developed include lead generation, compliance review, client reviews, alerts and follow-up, call centre automation, CRM workflow actions and portfolio reviews. This news service has examined cases such as the use of "co-pilots".

In late February, GReminders, a meeting and automation management platform for financial advisors, launched “Ask Anything,” an example in the US of the sort of AI tools that are proliferating in wealth management.