Manulife (MFC): A Deep Dive into Financials and Growth Metrics 2026

Manulife (MFC) is one of those rare TSX financials that can look “boring” on the surface while quietly compounding through multiple engines: Canadian insurance, wealth and asset management, and a meaningful Asia franchise. As of late February 2026, the market is valuing that mix at roughly ~$82B in equity value, with the stock trading around a mid-teens trailing P/E.

Where Manulife actually earns its keep

If you only look at headline net income, you’ll miss the signal because insurance results can be noisy quarter to quarter. Manulife’s 2025 results are better understood through core earnings, core EPS, and core ROE—the company reported core earnings of $7.5B and core EPS of $4.21 for 2025.
On the GAAP/IFRS line, net income attributed to shareholders was $5.6B in 2025, which matters mainly as a reminder that market experience (and assumption updates) can still swing reported profitability.

Manulife also keeps score the way long-term shareholders should: capital generation and what management does with it. In 2025, it generated $6.4B of remittances and returned nearly $5.5B of capital to shareholders—this is the “cash return velocity” piece that tends to support the multiple when sentiment gets shaky.

Capital strength: the quiet differentiator

For life insurers, the balance sheet is the product, and capital ratios are the safety rails. Manulife ended 4Q25 with a LICAT ratio of 136%, which is comfortably above regulatory minimums and gives the company room to keep buying back shares and defending the dividend through a less friendly macro tape.
Management’s profitability metrics also improved on a core basis, with core ROE of 16.5% for 2025 and 17.1% in 4Q25—that’s the kind of return profile that keeps MFC in the “high-quality financial” bucket instead of the “value trap” bucket. Peer context matters here. Sun Life reported a LICAT ratio of 157% (higher than Manulife’s), which partially explains why SLF often trades like a “premium compounder” when the market is rewarding consistency.
Meanwhile, iA Financial posted a solvency ratio of 133% at December 31, 2025—solid, but it plays in a different scale and business mix versus MFC.

Valuation on the TSX: what you’re paying for MFC

On TMX data, MFC is currently showing EPS (TTM) ~3.08 and a P/E (TTM) ~15.77—not “cheap,” but not priced like a flawless growth story either.
The dividend picture is also straightforward: the quarterly dividend is $0.485, and the annualized yield is roughly ~3.9% at current levels (with an ex-dividend date shown as Feb 25, 2026).

Here’s the TSX peer frame that I think is most useful for retail investors:

• Manulife (MFC): P/E ~15.8, yield ~3.9%
• Great-West Lifeco (GWO): P/E ~14.6, yield ~4.1%
• iA Financial (IAG): P/E ~13.7, yield ~2.5%
• Sun Life (SLF):P/E ~14.5 and market cap ~49.5B.

If you’re asking, “Why would I pay a mid-teens multiple for a life insurer?” the answer is that Manulife is being priced more like a capital return + mid-single-digit growth machine than a pure rate-sensitive bond proxy.

Operating momentum: sales and buybacks are doing work

The underappreciated part of Manulife’s 2025 release is how much of the story is about business momentum, not just portfolio yields. The company reported 2025 APE sales up 14%, with new business CSM up 28% and new business value up 18%—metrics that point to better “future profit inventory,” not just current-year earnings.
On the shareholder return side, Manulife purchased and cancelled 54.4M shares (about 3.1% of shares outstanding) for $2.4B in 2025, which is meaningful EPS torque even if top-line growth is lumpy.

For comparison, Great-West’s latest quarter leaned into operating strength as well: it posted base earnings of $1,245M in 4Q25 (up 12% YoY) and announced a 10% dividend increase, reinforcing the “steady compounder” narrative in the Canadian life space.

What I’d watch next if you’re holding (or stalking) MFC

Manulife doesn’t need everything to go right to work, but it does need a few needles to stay threaded. I’d keep a simple checklist over the next couple of quarters:

• Core ROE durability: does it stay in the mid-teens range, or fade as markets normalize?
• LICAT trajectory: 136% is healthy; the question is whether capital generation sustains buybacks and keeps a buffer.
• Sales quality: APE and new business CSM can grow for “good” reasons (pricing/persistency) or “bad” reasons (riskier mix).
• Capital deployment discipline: 2025’s buyback pace was aggressive; I want to see that remain opportunistic rather than automatic.

My bottom line on the TSX setup: MFC is a credible Canadian financial core holding when you want a blend of income and disciplined capital return, and you’re comfortable with insurance accounting noise and market-linked volatility in reported results. The stock doesn’t need multiple expansion to deliver—consistent core earnings, steady capital ratios, and continued buybacks can do a lot of the heavy lifting from here.

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