Manulife

Life insurance underwriting has long been a friction-heavy process, particularly for advisors managing high volumes of routine applications. At Manulife, one of Canada's largest insurers, advisors navigated lengthy electronic applications packed with low-value medical questions — many irrelevant to the specific applicant's age or coverage level. This generated inconsistent data entry, elevated rates of not-in-good-order submissions, and unnecessary back-and-forth between advisors and underwriters. For clients, the process intruded on a sensitive buying moment with excessive interrogation. The cumulative cost: slower cycle times, higher underwriter workload on cases that didn't require human judgment, and a client experience that undermined advisor productivity.

Manulife upgraded MAUDE — its AI underwriting engine first introduced as AIDA in 2018, Canada's first AI tool to make automatic underwriting decisions — alongside a fully redesigned electronic application. The new e-app uses predictive ML to drive adaptive questioning that adjusts in real time based on applicant age, requested coverage amount, and answers already provided, eliminating up to 40% of medical questions for eligible cases. Standardized drop-down inputs for medications, conditions, travel history, and hobbies replaced open-entry fields, reducing data quality issues at the point of submission. A hybrid decisioning architecture remains central: MAUDE auto-approves qualifying cases instantly, while those requiring nuanced judgment route seamlessly to human underwriters — with no additional steps imposed on the advisor. The system was rolled out to Canadian distribution teams in fall 2025.

By December 2025, 58% of eligible life insurance cases were receiving automatic approvals through MAUDE — a 56% increase over pre-launch auto-approval rates. Qualified applicants now receive decisions in as little as two minutes. Advisor adoption has been strong since the fall launch, with cleaner submissions and reduced resubmission rates attributed to standardized inputs.

• Auto-approval rate: 58% of eligible cases by December 2025
• Rate increase: 56% higher than pre-launch baseline
• Decision speed: As little as 2 minutes for qualifying applicants
• Medical question reduction: Up to 40% fewer questions per application
• Qualitative: Reduced NIGO (not-in-good-order) submissions; advisors report stronger client experience during the application interview

• Adaptive questioning outperforms static form reduction: Dynamically tailoring questions to each applicant's profile is more effective than simply shortening a fixed questionnaire — it eliminates irrelevant questions without sacrificing underwriting rigor.
• Hybrid AI + human decisioning enables responsible scale: Automating straightforward risks while preserving human review for complex cases allows volume growth without compromising governance or compliance obligations.
• Production tenure compounds model performance: MAUDE's roots in Manulife's 2018 AIDA system demonstrate that iterating on a mature, real-world engine yields results that new deployments cannot replicate immediately.
• Standardized inputs are a prerequisite for automation quality: Clean, structured data at point-of-entry directly reduces downstream errors and resubmission rates — a foundational requirement before AI decisioning can perform reliably.