Trust is required for speed
As the Global CAIO, Jodie Wallis, who leads AI business value creation at Manulife, has seen the pattern too many times: an engineer builds an agent over the weekend, demos it Monday, and months later it's still stuck in UAT.
The fix isn't more reviews — it's embedded, automated governance from day one. Agents that can evaluate their own risk, assess their own accuracy, and defend against adversaries get to production faster than the "we'll add governance later" alternative.
The regulatory clock and impact is real
Akka CEO, Tyler Jewell lays out the math: roughly 175 AI regulations coming online globally, with the EU AI Act enforcement starting later this year, and stiff penalties up to $35M. Stripped to essentials, the Act requires two things: explain and contain. Explainability for every decision an AI system makes, and the ability to interfere with a running system in real time. "Asking the LLM to give a chain of thought is not sufficient." After-the-fact auditing won't satisfy regulators or customers.
Cost governance is the silent killer
This was the segment that landed hardest. Wallis's infrastructure team forecast 3% monthly AI cost growth — forever. Her response: "Well, then we're out of business." Manulife's response was a three-pillar cost governance program, anchored by moving underwriting quick quotes and intelligent document processing onto Akka.
The results with Akka (so far):
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30–50% faster processing — same prompts, same accuracy
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Up to 300% more concurrency.
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All in support of Manulife's public commitment to $1B in AI-driven value,
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