Individual life insurance: Manulife’s shift bears fruit

Manulife’s return to the participating life insurance product market is proving profitable.

The insurer reported that new business gained 27% in value in Q1 2019, largely powered by its participating whole life product launched in June 2018. For the individual life insurance sector overall, Manulife’s sales rose by 50% in first-quarter 2019 compared with the corresponding period in 2018, before it added this product to its arsenal. 

The momentum is holding steady. At a conference call with financial analysts regarding the disclosure of Q1 2019 results, Mike Doughty, General Manager of Manulife Canada, said the insurer would be launching the other half of the participating product, which he calls life pay.

In mid-May, Manulife announced that its whole life product Manulife Par was gaining a new premium duration payable to age 90. This option is on top of the existing 10- and 20-year premium durations, InsuranceINTEL Weekly, a sister publication of Insurance Journal reported.

“We continue to think that there's both advisors that have not yet sold Manulife Par that we just need to reach, but also, opportunities to add a product. We believe that by getting back into the Par market, we could start to attract other business from those same independent advisors, and we're quite pleased to start to see our term business, our living benefits business, our Vitality business―they were all up in the first quarter, so we're feeling quite confident about our prospects there,” Doughty said.