Manulife reports $1.6B drop in Q2 earnings on market impacts

Manulife Financial Corp. says it saw a $1.6-billion drop in earnings in the second quarter compared with a year earlier as market turmoil hit its bottom line.

The insurance giant says it had net income of $1.09 billion, or 53 cents per share, for the quarter ending June 30 compared with earnings of $2.65 billion or $1.33 per share for the same quarter last year.

Analysts had expected net income of $1.47 billion or 76 cents per share, according to financial markets data firm Eikon.

Manulife says the drop in earnings came from charges from the direct impact of markets, compared with gains last year, as well as smaller gains from investment-related activities and lower core earnings.

Manulife reported core earnings of $1.56 billion, down 9% from the $1.68 billion for the same quarter last year.

The company says that while earnings are down, it has year-to-date reported higher net income attributable to shareholders than last year.

In Canada, annual premium equivalent sales were $361 million, up 32% from $274 million in the second quarter of 2021, primarily driven by higher large-case group insurance and individual insurance par sales and partially offset by lower segregated fund sales.

Manulife’s total annual premium equivalent sales were $1.4 billion, essentially unchanged from the second quarter of 2021.

Total assets under management and administration at June 30 were $1.27 trillion, a 6.3% decrease from $1.35 trillion the previous quarter.

Manulife said it enhanced its Manulife.ca website, including artificial intelligence and natural-language processing capabilities to improve searching for product information.