Manulife has selected Adaptive ML, a New York-based private AI software company, to provide reinforcement learning-powered model fine-tuning technology for its enterprise AI platform. This multi-year partnership enables Manulife to deploy specialized small language models (SLMs) that continuously adapt in real-time from new data and user feedback, driving greater accuracy, cost efficiency, and innovation in financial services.
Quick Intel
The Adaptive Engine uses reinforcement learning to fine-tune models aligned with specific business objectives, improving performance over time while maintaining reliability in regulated environments. This capability allows Manulife to move beyond generalist large language models toward targeted specialist agents that deliver superior outcomes in private, secure deployments.
"We continue to accelerate progress on our AI platform and Adaptive ML's capabilities position us to deliver breakthrough solutions that enhance speed, accuracy, and innovation. In addition to using large language models (LLMs) for certain use cases, the targeted use of specialist language models tuned on this platform will seek to provide both accuracy and cost efficiency benefits," said Jodie Wallis, Global Chief AI Officer at Manulife. "Manulife is proud to be a leader in AI, and this partnership allows us to maintain a competitive edge in what is a rapidly changing AI landscape. A key pillar of Manulife's enterprise strategy is to become an AI-powered organization—integrating solutions that deliver value, fuel growth, and enhance the customer experience."
The collaboration will initially focus on automating underwriting quotes, executing complex processes, and providing advisory support to sales professionals. These applications aim to accelerate deployment at scale while removing operational friction.
"Manulife continues to demonstrate leadership in deploying enterprise AI at scale, and this partnership is a blueprint for how regulated industries should adopt AI," said Julien Launay, CEO of Adaptive ML. "Generalist LLMs are not built for scalable enterprise production. Manulife is strategically taking ownership by deploying its own specialized agents using Adaptive Engine as the strategic reinforcement learning operations layer, thereby gaining superior reliability and the ability to deliver cost efficiencies throughout their private environments worldwide."
By leveraging SLMs with fine-tuning, Manulife advances its Responsible AI commitments, including sustainability through lower energy consumption while preserving high performance.
"Manulife is embedding AI in nearly every part of our business," said Shamus Weiland, Chief Information Officer at Manulife. "We're proud to be leveraging the power of the Adaptive ML, which will help us move faster while removing friction for our customers by leveraging reinforcement learning. We're committed to giving our teams progressive, innovative tools that help them deliver solutions that scale reliably and responsibly while generating value."
Recently recognized as the top life insurance company for AI maturity in the Evident AI Index, Manulife has been scaling AI investments since 2016 to support customer-centric digital transformation.
This partnership with Adaptive ML solidifies Manulife's position as an AI-forward organization, equipping teams with advanced tools to deliver measurable value and enhanced experiences across global operations.
About Manulife
Manulife Financial Corporation is a leading international financial services provider, helping our customers make their decisions easier and lives better. With our global headquarters in Toronto, Canada, we operate as Manulife across Canada, Asia, and Europe, and primarily as John Hancock in the United States, providing financial advice and insurance for individuals, groups and businesses. Through Manulife Wealth & Asset Management, we offer global investment, financial advice, and retirement plan services to individuals, institutions, and retirement plan members worldwide. At the end of 2024, we had more than 37,000 employees, over 109,000 agents, and thousands of distribution partners, serving over 36 million customers. We trade as 'MFC' on the Toronto, New York, and the Philippine stock exchanges, and under '945' in Hong Kong. Not all offerings are available in all jurisdictions. For additional information, please visit manulife.com.
About Adaptive ML
Adaptive ML is a New York-headquartered Reinforcement Learning (RL) company and the provider of Adaptive Engine, an end-to-end Reinforcement Learning Operations (RLOps) platform to tune, evaluate, and serve enterprise-specialized language models. We consider Reinforcement Learning (RL) the foundation for Enterprise Super Intelligence. We help large organizations build, own, and deploy intelligent agents to move AI from the lab into robust production, ensuring demonstrable business value and highly intuitive customer experiences at scale. The company is led by a founding ML team that previously built some of the world's most popular open LLMs. Backed by Index Ventures and ICONIQ Capital, Adaptive ML works with global enterprise customers across financial services, healthcare, education, professional services, telcos and travel. The company has offices in New York City, Toronto, and Paris.
TechIntelPro empowers B2B technology decision-makers with the latest industry trends, deep insights, leadership perspectives and actionable intelligence to drive both organizational and professional milestones—and thrive on the tech pulse.