Manulife Financial Corporation

Thank you for standing by. This is the conference operator. Welcome to the Manulife Financial Corporation first quarter 2026 results conference call. As a reminder, all participants are in a listen-only mode and the conference 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. You will hear a toad acknowledging your request. Should you need assistance during the conference call, you may reach an operator by pressing star, then zero. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Hung Ko, Global Head of Treasury and Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Welcome to Manual Life's earnings conference call to discuss our first quarter 2026 financial and operating results. Our earnings materials, including a webcast slide for today's call, are available in the Investor Relations section of our website at manuallife.com. Before we start, please refer to slide 2 for a caution on forward-looking statements and slide 33 for a note on a non-GAAP and other financial measures used in this presentation. Please note that certain material factors assumptions apply in making forward-looking statements, and actual results may differ materially from what is stated. Turning to slide 4, we'll begin today's presentation with Phil Withington, our President and Chief Executive Officer, who will provide a highlight of our first quarter 2026 results and a strategic update. 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 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. As I reflect on my first year as CEO, I'm proud of what we've accomplished as an organization. We've moved at pace to make significant progress against our refreshed enterprise strategy And as we look to the future, we're well positioned to achieve our ambition to be the number one choice for customers. I'll begin with an overview of our first quarter financial performance starting on slide six. We delivered solid results in the first quarter building on our strong 2025 momentum despite heightened macro uncertainty. Our insurance businesses generated strong top line results with each segment achieving double-digit growth in new business CSM. This contributed to 18% growth in our CSM balance and further strengthened our future earnings potential. Asia had strong sales this quarter, with meaningful growth from key markets including Hong Kong, Japan, and Singapore. While Global WAM posted net outflows in the first quarter, we saw sequential improvement including continued institutional inflows supported by the recently acquired Convess business, as well as CQS. Colin will take you through those details shortly. From a profitability standpoint, we delivered core EPS growth of 11% in line with our medium-term target. This reflects strong growth in Asia, where core earnings increased 22% year-over-year, as well as the positive impact of share buybacks. We delivered this result despite the impact of the transition to EMPF, which moderated core earnings growth in Global WAM. It was also a challenging quarter for insurance experience in Canada. Nevertheless, we continued to make progress towards our 18% plus core ROE target by 2027 and delivered a solid core ROE of 16.5%, up 90 basis points from the prior year. Onto our balance sheet. Our LICAT ratio remains strong, and our leverage ratio is well below our target, providing us with ample financial flexibility. In addition, our adjusted book value per share increased 6%, even as we continue to return significant capital to shareholders through dividends and share buybacks. Moving on to slide 7, which shows the refreshed enterprise strategy introduced late last year. The organization remains highly energized about the strategy with a focus on execution to deliver high-quality, sustainable growth. Continuing our strong momentum from last year, we made meaningful progress executing the strategy again this quarter, which you can see on slide eight. A balanced and well-diversified portfolio underpins our ability to deliver earnings resilience and long-term value creation. This is why we continue to expand our global reach and capabilities, which have proven to be especially important during periods of uncertainty. We were recently named Asia's best insurance provider for wealth management, reflecting our innovative product suite, value-added service, and trusted relationships with our distribution partners across our high net worth channels. In Global WAM, we completed the acquisition of Schroders Indonesia, strengthening our position as the largest asset manager in Indonesia. And we entered into a strategic partnership with LNG, enabling us to leverage complementary strengths in global asset management and distribution and expand access to differentiated investment solutions across institutional, retirement, and retail channels. In the U.S., we further differentiated our indexed and hybrid indexed universal life offerings, positioning as well to meet evolving income protection and wealth accumulation needs. We also continued to expand our U.S. distribution footprint, and over the past year, our wholesaling team has grown by more than 50%. This expansion enables us to deepen advisor relationships, improve execution and coverage in key markets, and better support the launch of new products and initiatives. Becoming an AI-powered organization is a key area of focus, and we're accelerating progress through targeted strategic actions. This includes recent strategic partnerships, such as our collaborations with ACCA and Adaptive ML, which improve our ability to deploy AI at scale with speed and consistency. In parallel, we're focused on increasing our capacity and accelerating the pace of our technology initiatives. By further leveraging AI tools, our developers drove a 30% increase in productivity this quarter, enhancing their ability to support business growth and develop new capabilities. In Global WAM, we deployed an AI-powered sales platform in US retail that has driven a 40% increase in meaningful advisor interactions and is supporting higher flows. We also continued to roll out AI tools across Asia to enhance agent and advisor productivity, including the launch of a new distributor AI tool in Vietnam and enhancements to our advisor AI tool in Japan. These initiatives support faster access to information, enhanced customer service, and enable further improvements to distributor productivity and wider customer reach. In the US, we expanded our QuickQuote support tool, automating nearly half of preliminary assessments and reducing average turnaround time from days to minutes. These examples illustrate how we're scaling digital and AI capabilities across the enterprise to deliver measurable improvements in efficiencies, customer experience, and value. And finally, we're committed to empowering health, wealth, and longevity for our customers across all stages of their lives, and we continue to deepen our leadership in this space. During the quarter, we announced a new partnership with Gardent Health, offering eligible customers in Asia access to the Shield multi-cancer detection blood test. We're proud to be the first insurer in Asia to offer this test, expanding access to early cancer detection. And in Canada, we've partnered with Osara Health, to offer evidence-based cancer support programs to eligible group benefits customers, helping them navigate the daily challenges of living with cancer, obtaining treatment, and recovery. Overall, I'm pleased with the progress we're making. We're taking decisive action to strengthen our competitive differentiation, which is positioning us for long-term success and contributed to our solid operating results this quarter. Our financial and operating performance underscores the strength of our strategy, the discipline of our execution, and the quality of our global franchise. We remain steadfast in our commitment to delivering on our targets and driving sustainable growth, and we're confident in our ability to do so. With that, I'll hand it over to Colin to discuss our quarterly results in more detail. Colin.