Manulife Financial Corporation (MFC:CA) Presents at 24th Annual Financial Services Conference Transcript

SA Transcripts159.1K FollowersFollow5ShareSaveComments Manulife Financial Corporation (MFC:CA) 24th Annual Financial Services Conference March 24, 2026 9:00 AM EDT Company Participants Colin Simpson - Chief Financial OfficerPhilip Witherington - President, CEO & Director Conference Call Participants Gabriel Dechaine - National Bank Financial, Inc., Research Division Presentation Gabriel DechaineNational Bank Financial, Inc., Research Division Thanks for coming to Montreal again. Colin SimpsonChief Financial Officer Thanks a lot, Gabe. It's time for you to relax and I'll let you finished interviewing your CEO. Gabriel DechaineNational Bank Financial, Inc., Research Division Yes. I can loosen up a bit. I was up tight at that time. Question-and-Answer Session Gabriel DechaineNational Bank Financial, Inc., Research Division Let's start with a fun one, ROE. Every company I cover basically is hiking their ROE targets. You were early in that phase, by the way, I'm sure you noted. Just to put a finer point on that target, is it a full year 2027 or an exit rate? Colin SimpsonChief Financial Officer Yes. The short answer to the question is it's a full year 18% target in 2027. I think you're asking the question because we're at 16.5% in 2025. So it still seems like quite a jump to get to 18%. But if you look at the second half of the year, we had an 18.1% core ROE in Q3 and 17.1% in Q4. So second half of the year went quite a bit better than the first half of the year and shows that we're pretty close to it. If we look at the longer way to answer the question, I mean, the real reason why I was so keen and we were so keen on an ROE is it is a measure of quality for a company. And in my opinion, people underestimate the quality of Manulife as a