Manulife USA Tools Demonstrate Estate Tax Advantages of Using Life Insurance with Credit Shelter Trusts.

Business Editors

BOSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 16, 2003

Continuing to provide advisors and clients with creative and effective ways to utilize life insurance for their estate planning needs, The Manufacturers Life Insurance Company (U.S.A.) (Manulife USA) introduced a new set of Credit Shelter Trusts marketing and educational materials and an MLI Solutions(SM) module. These tools help advisors to recognize opportunities that may ease their clients' estate tax burdens through purchasing life insurance or entering into a fair market loan arrangement with a Credit Shelter Trust.

Already a popular tool for estate planning, the Credit Shelter Trust is created outside the taxable estate to take advantage of the applicable exclusion amount and has the potential to accumulate a significant amount of assets. Purchasing life insurance inside the Credit Shelter Trust or having the Credit Shelter Trust enter into a loan arrangement with an irrevocable life insurance trust allows clients to leverage these assets while potentially lessening their estate taxes. The new sales materials and technical resources developed by Manulife USA are designed to help educate advisors who may be unfamiliar with these applications of Credit Shelter Trusts.

"An important option in any estate plan, a Credit Shelter Trust can also be an efficient means of funding life insurance, providing clients with additional estate tax protection," said Robert A. Cook, President of U.S. Insurance, Manulife USA. "These materials are designed to inform advisors of the life insurance options that are available through Credit Shelter Trusts and to help them to translate this knowledge into more effective estate planning for their clients."

MLI Solutions modules offer the flexibility that advisors need to develop the customized and comprehensive solutions that their clients demand. MLI Solutions has estate and retirement planning modules, as well as business planning modules. With the introduction of Manulife USA's Credit Shelter Trust sales tools and MLI Solutions software module comes additional support from one of the industry's leading Advanced Markets groups. To help producers promote and sell this concept, the sales materials are available for download through the SalesNet portal of www.manulife.com/usinsurance, and a CD-ROM can be requested by contacting Advanced Markets at [phone], option 3 or via email at [e-mail].

About Manulife

Manulife USA is committed to offering the highest quality life insurance, pension, and individual wealth management products to its clients. Its family of products has been built around a powerful combination of investment options chosen with the goal of providing attractive risk-adjusted returns and broad diversification across asset classes, investment styles, and asset managers. With its extensive product lines, competitive underwriting, excellent ratings, and quality customer service, Manulife USA is dedicated to providing quality products designed to help create and preserve wealth for its clients.

Manulife Financial is a leading Canadian-based financial services group operating in 15 countries and territories worldwide. Through its extensive network of employees, agents and distribution partners, Manulife Financial offers clients a diverse range of financial protection products and wealth management services. Funds under management by Manulife Financial were US$106.5 billion (Cdn$144.3 billion) as at June 30, 2003.

Manulife Financial Corporation trades as 'MFC' on the TSX, NYSE and PSE, and under '0945' on the SEHK. Manulife Financial can be found on the Internet at www.manulife.com.