Jodie Wallis: The architect behind Manulife’s AI revolution

Manulife’s globally recognized leadership in artificial intelligence is set to expand under the guidance of Jodie Wallis, the newly appointed global chief AI officer, who told InsuranceNewsNet the company, which operates John Hancock in the United States, is beginning to see its use in every aspect of operations.

“Prior to large language models coming on the stage, we would have said AI is suitable for parts of our business and less suitable for other parts. Now, our perspective is it’s really suitable for all parts of our business,” Wallis said.

This is everything from front-line sales to contact centers, IT, operations and some corporate functions, she noted, hinting at a fully AI-integrated future for the company.

“Every part of our business will have an AI road map embedded in their plans for the coming couple of years …. Going forward, everything will have an element of machine learning, everything will have an element of Gen AI or LLMs, and will probably have some sort of agentic representation, meaning the AI components might be set up separately but work together,” Wallis said.

Global AI leadership

Manulife has been repeatedly recognized for AI innovation. It recently ranked among the top five insurers with the best AI rollout in Evident’s 2025 AI Index, and ranked first among life insurers — which Wallis said the company is immensely proud of.

One of its major achievements has been the implementation of its own internal version of ChatGPT, called ChatMFC. This is being used by more than 40% of the organization, and Manulife also holds internal “prompt-a-thons” where experts help staff develop and share job-specific prompts.

“Between 2020 and now, we’ve been on a steady journey to move from advanced analytics and ML into really trying to superpower everything we do at Manulife with AI, wherever that makes sense,” Wallis noted.

A role evolved

Wallis officially became Manulife’s global chief AI officer in May, after entering Manulife four years ago as its global chief analytics officer. However, she said she has been overseeing AI that entire time, and while her title has now changed, the position is not really new — it just reflects the work she and her team have been doing.

Now, Wallis leads a team of 200 data scientists and AI engineers, embedded across all of Manulife’s businesses — 80% of whom work on dedicated business units and 20% of whom handle global use cases and applied research and development

“Most of the work we do and deliver are solutions that involve AI, that deliver benefits to our businesses, customers and broader set of stakeholders, [and] that kind of go above and beyond what could be accomplished with automation or traditional statistical techniques or apps,” Wallis said.

The AI solutions process

Wallis revealed that her team’s multifaceted AI solution process starts with receiving ideas from business partners or internal team members. Just this year, she said, they created a use-case inventory where any one of Manulife’s 38,000 employees can suggest a new AI use case.

“We’ve collected close to 600 ideas from across the organization, and then those ideas get reviewed regularly with representatives from my team in each of the business areas. There’s some duplication that gets resolved, and then the ideas get prioritized based on their feasibility but also based on the value that the ideas can bring to our customers or bring to our organization,” Wallis explained.

From there, her team takes an adaptive approach to the frequent build vs. buy conundrum: They look for opportunities to buy proven AI solutions that fit their needs, but they also don’t shy away from building from scratch when that is the better option.

At the same time, they no longer expect AI apps to last, at most, six months, due to the rapid pace of development.

“We’re building the muscle of constant reimagination rather than a big bang of reimagination followed by a period of silence,” Wallis said.

A fully integrated future

Manulife is in the final stages of creating its 2026 plans, but Wallis confirmed that just about every aspect of Manulife’s business will incorporate some level of AI going forward, under her leadership.

“We just announced our earnings last week, and as part of that, you can hear the CEO’s enthusiasm for AI. He really sees a lot of transformational potential, particularly in delivering products and services to our customers much faster and in ways that are tailored to their specific needs. So that’s definitely where we’re going,” Wallis said.

She alluded to specific use cases, including:

» Investment research capability
» Deep research
» Corporate functions: marketing, risk management and audits
» Sales and distribution
» Coaching and onboarding

Wallis also acknowledged agentic AI as a hot topic but clarified that Manulife interprets that as “just an additional way of setting up AI to do different types of tasks and more complex tasks and breaking those tasks down into component pieces.”

“What we’re really focusing on right now is creating the platform that will allow us to move faster in developing solutions by combining ML, LLMs and elements of this new kind of agentic architecture that we’re talking about,” Wallis said. “We’re adapting to that as we speak, and that’ll be a big part of what we deliver next year.”

Manulife, founded in 1887, is one of Canada’s oldest and most established insurance and financial services providers. It operates in more than 19 countries and territories around the world.

Rayne Morgan is a journalist, copywriter, and editor with over 10 years' combined experience in digital content and print media. You can reach her at [email protected].