MANULIFE STEPS UP PUSH INTO BANKING.

TORONTO • One of Canada’s biggest insurers says it is planning to leverage its banking business to grow even larger.

As part of an institutional investor day last week, Manulife Financial Corp.

outlined several priorities, including accelerating the company’s growth. One of the investor day slides suggested the firm would do so using Manulife Bank of Canada, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Manulife, “to deepen existing relationships.”

“Manulife Bank is a key differentiator and complements our other businesses,” another slide said, adding that the lender could help “promote holistic product offering to increase share of wallet” and “drive new customer acquisition in targeted segments.” “

The slide was in line with comments made in May by the head of the Torontobased insurance and financial services giant.

“We’ve really made some great progress with that bank, and quite frankly, when we talk about holistically meeting our customer needs, we’re thinking how we can really integrate the bank more into that offering,” Roy Gori, president and chief executive of Manulife, said on a conference call with analysts.

Manulife Bank offers savings and chequing accounts, lines of credit and mortgages, among other products. As of the quarter ended March, 31, Manulife said its bank’s average net lending assets were $20.6 billion, up two per cent from the end of the previous quarter.

The bank also bank contributed $140 million to Manulife’s core earnings last year, according to its annual report, up from $114 million in 2016. Total core earnings for the company in 2017 were $4.6 billion.

Manulife also announced during the investor day that it planned to free up $5 billion of capital and generate more than $1 billion in savings by 2022. While some of that capital could come from disposing

REALLY MADE SOME GREAT PROGRESS WITH THAT BANK.

of some businesses, and despite a Canadian banking landscape dominated by the Big Six lenders, it sounds like Manulife Bank is safe.

Gori said in May that “we don’t see Manulife Bank as a legacy business.”

Michael Doughty, president and CEO of Manulife Canada, added during the same conference call that the bank has become an “important” part of the business.

“And we serve about a third of all of the Canadian households, none of our kind of core competitors can offer some of the things that we can offer through Manulife Bank,” Doughty said. “So we do think that there is a strategic value to it from our perspective in terms of not only reaching new Canadians, but more deeply serving the customers that we do have.”