March 2026

We’re solidifying our leadership position and setting a new industry benchmark. Manulife has always been a leader in the HNW underwriting market. Our recent rise to number one in Canada for life insurance sales – across Life and Living Benefits for 2025, (source: based on the latest Canadian Individual Insurance [Life & Living Benefits] data published by LIMRA), has been fueled by an outstanding product lineup, and excellence in our sales, tax and estate planning, underwriting, pricing, special case markets, and new business teams.

2025 milestone: We increased our Manulife Par per life retention to $50 million for ages 18–70— an elite threshold built on rigorous risk management and underwriting standards applied across our business.

To access this retention, the following conditions apply:

• Manulife must be elected as exclusive or lead underwriter and control reinsurance capacity.
• Available to advisors with a proven track record of placing HNW policies with Manulife, achieving Platinum Elite status.
• Policies are supported by reinsurance to maximize capacity.

What followed: Throughout 2025, we successfully deployed this expanded capacity across multiple flagship cases, meeting advisor and HNW client needs – The Summit Experience delivered throughout.

We’ve announced new, industry leading limits: 

• Automatic binding (autobind) limit: $75 million for ages 18–70, (up from $60 million).
• Jumbo limit: $100 million (a dramatic rise from $65 million). The Jumbo limit reflects the total inforce and applied for amounts across all companies.

Why it matters: Our disciplined management and professional underwriting enabled us to negotiate these limits with our reinsurance partners—trust earned through consistent performance and treaty discipline.

Manulife’s market leading retention and reinsurance arrangements reflect the professionalism you know and benefit from – We’re incredibly proud of how these changes can elevate your business:

• Faster decisions.
• Access to capacity you won’t find elsewhere backed by Manulife’s HNW expertise.
• Confidence that your HNW clients are supported by a market leader.

We are committed to supporting you and your clients at every step – Decisions made easier. Lives made better.

For more underwriting tips and insight follow Karen Cutler on LinkedIn. Karen is our VP, Head of Underwriting and Claims, Chief Underwriter Individual Insurance.