Manulife Canada
Manulife Canada Financial, or the Manufacturers Life Insurance Company, the largest insurance company in all of Canada, has been around since 1887. The insurance and financial services company bills itself as being "dynamic and progressive" company. Manulife has millions of clients in 19 countries and territories worldwide, and employs a vast network of staff employees and independent financial advisors who facilitate the insurance company's providing of a wide range of financial protection and wealth management services. Manulife does business as John Hancock in the United States. John Hancock is one of the most highly respected life insurance and financial services agencies in America. At the time of this writing, it's accurately estimated that Manulife manages assets worth nearly $400 billion US. Manulife has been given the highest rating possible by independent financial service institution rating company Standard & Poor's, who give the Canadian life insurance company a AAA rating. Moody's Investors Services has also given the company an Aa2 rating, one of its very highest ratings as well. However, Standard & Poor's has since lowered its rating of the company to "negative" because of the company's need to borrow money from banks, as will be discussed below. "Manulife’s conservative and prudent risk and business management will help us navigate [all economic recessions or other dark financial times]. We hope that this announcement, along with information we have recently released, will help reassure our clients, shareholders, and partners. While not immune to the global economy, Manulife has the financial strength and liquidity to successfully weather these markets and leverage opportunities that unsettled times bring," says Dominic D’Alessandro, President and CEO of Manulife. Manulife Financial is recognized as being one of the leading providers of financial protection and wealth management services to individuals as well as groups and private business interests, and it operates in the international market as well as the North American one. Life and health insurance, annuities, reinsurance, investment products, pension and retirement products, and group benefits and savings products are all sold by the company. In addition to serving the United States and Canada, Manulife operates in Japan, China, Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore, Vietnam, Taiwan, Malaysia, Thailand, the United Kingdom, Australia, Germany, Belgium, Barbados, and Bermuda. Manulife employs more than 40,000 people, including over 10,000 in Canada and over 22,000 in Asia. In December of 2008, Manulife got another $2.1 billion from investors to top up its cash reserves. The rough global financial situation was draining the company's reserves. Manulife has been selling financial products to consumers that came with a guaranteed minimum return on their investment to help pay for costs engendered by retirement. These products were seen as cutting-edge and state of the art for the insurance industry, and the Canadian life insurance company was seen as making a very intelligent business move by increasing its profits as it sought to address the needs of an increasingly older population. However, the troubled economy has been draining money out of the insurance company as it had to put up increasing amounts of money from out of its reserves to back up its guarantees in the wake of investment vehicles suffering hard losses. Manulife sold more shares in its company at a deep discount to raise the $2.1 billion. The shares were sold to eight major backers plus institutional investors. Much of the money raised in this way was going to be used to pay back borrowed money to Canadian banks. Manulife became publicly traded in 1999, and these events made it the insurer's first losing year in its share prices.
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