Manulife Financial (NYSE:MFC) Q2 2024 Earnings Conference Call August 8, 2024 8:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Roy Gori - President & CEO
Colin Simpson - CFO
Phil Witherington - President & CEO, Manulife Asia
Marc Costantini - Global Head of Inforce Management
Scott Hartz - CIO
Steve Finch - Chief Actuary
Brooks Tingle - President & CEO, John Hancock
Paul Lorentz - President & CEO, Manulife Investment Management
Hung Ko - VP, IR

Conference Call Participants

Meny Grauman - Scotiabank
John Aiken - Jefferies
Paul Holden - CIBC
Gabriel Dechaine - National Bank Financial
Tom MacKinnon - BMO Capital Markets
Mario Mendonca - TD Securities
Doug Young - Desjardins Capital Markets
Lemar Persaud - Cormark Securities
Nigel D’Souza - Veritas Investment Research

Operator

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Manulife Financial Second Quarter 2024 Financial Results Conference Call. I would now like to turn the meeting over to Mr. Ko. Please go ahead, Mr. Ko.

Hung Ko

Thank you. Welcome to Manulife’s earnings conference call to discuss our second quarter and year-to-date 2024 financial and operating results. Our earnings materials, including webcast Slides for today’s call, are available on the Investor Relations section of our website at Manulife.com.

Before we start, please refer to Slide 2 for a caution on forward-looking statements, and Slide 35 for a note on non-GAAP and other financial measures used in this presentation. 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, Roy Gori, our President and Chief Executive Officer, will begin today’s presentation with the highlights of our second quarter and year-to-date 2024 results and a strategic update. Following Roy’s remarks, 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 Roy Gori, our President and Chief Executive Officer. Roy?

Roy Gori

Thanks, Hung, and thank you, everyone, for joining us today. Starting on Slide 6, we recently hosted our Investor Days in Hong Kong and Jakarta in late June, and it was truly a pleasure to have so many of you join us to hear how we are raising the bar at Manulife. There are a few key takeaways that are worth recapping here. First is that we've gone from being a high-risk low ROE business in 2017, to a lower risk and high ROE business today. Second, we remain uniquely positioned to capitalize on the mega trends that are shaping the global economy, a growing middle class in Asia, an expanding global retirement gap, and the dramatic digitization of the consumer. Third, as a result of our strategy and disciplined execution, we announced ambitious but achievable new targets and a clear path for achieving them. These include increasing our core ROE target from 15% plus to 18% plus, and introducing a cumulative remittances target of $22 billion plus, both by 2027. By delivering on these targets, we will further solidify Manulife as a high-growth, high-return and high cash generation company.