Manulife and Microsoft announced a five-year renewal and expansion of their partnership, under which Manulife will adopt Microsoft's 365 E7 Frontier Suite capabilities, including expanding Microsoft 365 Copilot to more than 30,000 employees and deploying Microsoft Agent 365. Manulife framed the deal as supporting its strategic priority to become an AI-powered organization. Shamus Weiland, chief technology and operations officer at Manulife, said the partnership underpins the next stage of the insurer's AI transformation. Microsoft is a foundational partner in Manulife's global enterprise AI platform, currently in pilot, which is intended to let Manulife's data scientists and developers build, deploy and manage AI and agentic solutions at scale within a shared governance framework. Manulife will use Microsoft Agent 365 as a registry for AI agents across the enterprise. Jodie Wallis, Manulife's global chief AI officer, said governance needs to be embedded into daily operations. The Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions published Guideline E-23 on Model Risk Management in September 2025, which extends beyond deposit-taking institutions to cover all federally regulated insurers and explicitly brings AI and machine learning models into scope. The guideline takes effect May 1, 2027.