Manulife Financial Corporation

Thank you for standing by. This is the conference operator. Welcome to the Manulife Financial Corporation third quarter 2025 results conference call. As a reminder, all participants are in listening mode and the conference call is being recorded. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To join the question queue, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. Should you need assistance during the conference, you may reach an operator pressing star then zero. I'd now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Kang Ho, Global Head of Treasury and Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Welcome to Manulife's earnings conference call to discuss our third quarter 2025 financial and operating results, as well as our refresh strategy that was announced yesterday afternoon. Our earnings materials, including a webcast slide for today's call, are available in the investor relations section of our website at manulife.com. In addition, I would like to note that a video recording of our Refresh Strategy presentation and the related materials are also available in the same section of our website. Before we start, please refer to slide 2 for a caution on forward-looking statements and slide 33 for a note on the non-GAAP and other financial measures used in this presentation. Please note that certain material factors or assumptions are applied in making forward-looking statements, and actual results may differ materially from what is stated. Turning to slide 4, We begin today's presentation with Phil Withington, our President and Chief Executive Officer, who will provide a highlight of our third quarter 2025 results in a strategic update, including an overview of our refresh strategy. Following Phil, Colin Simpson, our Chief Financial Officer, will discuss the company's financial and operating results in more detail. After their prepared remarks, we'll move to the live Q&A portion of the call. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Phil.

Thanks, Hung, and thank you, everyone, for joining us today. Before I start, I'd like to thank Mark Costantini, who's with us on the call today, for his outstanding contributions to Manulife throughout his career at the company, and wish him well in the next chapter of his career. Mark's two stints with Manulife total more than 25 years, and in his most recent role as Global Head of Enforce Management, he had an immense impact in a short period of time. including the completion of several monumental reinsurance transactions, which unlocked significant value for shareholders. While we're sad to see him go, we know he will flourish as a CEO, and we wish him nothing but the best. In-force management has been embedded as a capability in our organization, and it will remain an important enabler of our commercial success. Naveed Irshad President and CEO of Manulife Canada has taken on an expanded role and assumed responsibility for in-force management and reinsurance globally while continuing to lead the Canada segment. Shifting back to the purpose of today's call, yesterday we announced our third quarter 2025 financial results. At the same time, we unveiled our refreshed enterprise strategy, which builds on our strength. is growth-focused and is anchored in our ambition to be the number one choice for customers. Materials related to our refreshed strategy, including a video, are available in the investor relations section of our website, but I want to highlight a few key takeaways. To deliver on our ambition, drive sustainable growth for the long term, and build on our total shareholder return momentum, we're pleased to introduce new and elevated strategic priorities. Maintaining a diversified and balanced portfolio is important to us as it provides resilience and access to multiple sources of growth without over-reliance on any single market. We continue to be well-positioned to capture the exceptional growth opportunities across Asia and global WAMP and I'm pleased to share that we have reached an agreement with Mahindra, a leading conglomerate and consumer brand in India, to form a joint venture to enter the India insurance market subject to regulatory approvals. Mahindra is an incredibly strong and trusted partner with whom we have an existing asset management relationship, and I'm excited about expanding our partnership further. Our continued focus on Asia and Global WAN will be accompanied by deliberate investments to enhance and strengthen our leadership position in our home market and maintain a scaled presence in the US, which remains the largest insurance market and the largest economy in the world. We will also leverage our early leadership in AI to become a truly AI-powered organization, and we will utilize our strengths in product, digital innovation, and partnerships become the most trusted partner for our customers' health, wealth, and financial well-being. These efforts will be further enabled through superior distribution, making it easier for customers, agents, and partners to engage with us, and of course, through our winning team and culture, which is critical to every aspect of the execution of our strategy. At our investor day in 2024, we announced various key performance indicators and targets, including total shareholder return, employee engagement, and net promoter score, which we remain focused on delivering. I am incredibly excited about this next chapter for Manulife, and I'm confident that executing on our strategy will further strengthen our ability to deliver on both our 2027 financial targets and sustain our growth for the next decade and beyond. Moving on to our quarterly results on slide 7, which reflect our continued focus on execution and demonstrate the strength and diversity of our businesses. We generated strong insurance new business performance this quarter, with each insurance segment delivering growth of 15% or greater in new business CSM, providing clear evidence of our future earnings potential. While GlobalWAM experienced net outflows of $6.2 billion, which Colin will discuss in more detail shortly, it continued to generate positive operating leverage with margin expansion year over year. From a profitability standpoint, core EPS grew 16% from the prior year, supported by a record level of core earnings, reflecting strong underlying business growth in Asia, GlobalWAM, and Canada segments, along with other factors, which Colin will talk about further. Our strong core earnings generation contributed to third quarter core ROE of 18.1%, demonstrating that our core ROE target of 18% plus by 2027 is within reach, and we remain confident that we'll deliver on it. Our balance sheet remains strong, with a LICAT ratio of 138%, and a leverage ratio of 22.7%. And we generated another quarter of book value per share growth, with an increase of 7% from the prior year, while continuing to return a significant amount of capital to shareholders. On to slide eight. I'd like to dive a little deeper into the recent performance of our high potential businesses, particularly Asia and GlobalWAM, as they remain critical elements of our refreshed enterprise strategy. Over the past several years, both segments demonstrated strong track records of generating consistent growth and resilience through a volatile operating environment. The performance from both Asia and Global WAM has meant that on a year-to-date basis, our highest potential businesses are contributing 76% of core earnings exceeding our 2025 target of 75%. Asia had another outstanding quarter of growth, delivering a 29% year-on-year increase in core earnings to a record level. Our NBV margin also remained resilient, improving year-on-year to 39%, backed by the solid growth in new business during the quarter. In Global WAM, we also delivered a record level of core earnings, maintaining another quarter of strong growth, and this was our eighth consecutive quarter of double-digit pre-tax growth from the prior year. And our focus on disciplined growth with proactive expense management enabled us to continue to generate positive operating leverage and steadily increase our core EBITDA margin, which expanded by 310 basis points year-on-year, to 30.9% this quarter. These are great results, and as I reflect on the future and what comes next, I'm confident that our refreshed strategy, supported by clear priorities, will position us to deliver sustainable growth and achieve our new ambition to be the number one choice for customers. With that, I'll hand it over to Colin to discuss our quarterly results in more detail. Colin.