Manulife Investments proposes changes to its pricing model and risk ratings

Securityholders receive Management Fee Reductions relative to their total mutual fund holdings
Fixed Administration Fee Model proposed to replace operating expenses
Risk Rating Changes to Three Mutual Funds

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TORONTO, July 27, 2016 /CNW/ - Manulife Investments today announced changes and proposed changes to the Manulife Mutual Funds and Manulife Private Investment Pools.

"Advisors and their investors are demanding simpler, predictable and competitive pricing," said Bernard Letendre, President, Manulife Investments. "Manulife is taking the necessary steps to meet these demands and provide better features to customers above and beyond investment performance.  These changes will make it easier for advisors and investors to understand and access our investment platform."

Effective on or after October 1, 2016, Manulife Investments plans to introduce a new tiered pricing model. The new model offers standardized management fee reductions to securityholders who meet certain eligibility requirements, such as reaching certain asset levels in their combined household holdings.  The fee reductions will not be limited to an individual fund; they will apply to the securityholder's total Manulife mutual fund holdings across all series.

Manulife Investments proposes to replace certain operating expenses of its funds (excluding the Manulife Dollar-Cost Averaging Fund) with fixed administration fees.  Variable operating expenses, a component of the management expense ratio (MER), are currently charged to the funds.  In an effort to generally keep future MERs equal to or below the most recently reported MERs, management fee changes are proposed as well for certain series of certain funds.  A special meeting of securityholders will be held on or about November 16, 2016 to consider the proposed changes.  If the requisite approvals are obtained and if Manulife proceeds with the changes, it is expected that the proposed changes will be implemented on or after January 1, 2017.  This change, in many cases, is expected to give securityholders immediate cost savings, fee predictability and protection against increased MERs.  Manulife referred the proposal to introduce fixed administration fees and management fee changes to the Independent Review Committee ("IRC") of the Funds. The IRC considered the proposal and determined that the proposal would achieve a fair and reasonable result for the Funds.

Manulife Investments also announced a risk rating change to the following funds:

Fund	Current Rating	New Rating
Manulife Global Real Estate Unconstrained Fund	medium to high	medium
Manulife Conservative Income Fund	low	low to medium
Manulife Preferred Income Class	low	low to medium

Manulife follows the guidelines established by the Investment Funds Institute of Canada in determining risk ratings, which is based primarily upon the variability of returns for a mutual fund.  No material changes have been made to the investment objectives, strategies or management of these mutual funds.

More details related to the tiered pricing and the fixed administration fee, as well as the risk rating changes, will be included in the Manulife Mutual Funds and Manulife Private Investment Pools Simplified Prospectus, which will be filed on or about August 2, 2016.

For more information, please visit manulifemutualfunds.ca or contact Manulife Investments at the following telephone numbers:

English: 1-888-588-7999
French: 1-877-426-9991

About Manulife Investments
Manulife Investments builds on 125 years of Manulife's wealth and investment management expertise in managing assets for Canadian investors. As one of Canada's leading integrated financial services providers, Manulife Investments offers a variety of products and services including mutual funds, as a division of Manulife Asset Management Limited, and segregated fund contracts, annuities and guaranteed interest contracts, as a division of The Manufacturers Life Insurance Company.

About Manulife
Manulife Financial Corporation is a leading international financial services group providing forward-thinking solutions to help people with their big financial decisions. We operate as John Hancock in the United States, and Manulife elsewhere. We provide financial advice, insurance and wealth and asset management solutions for individuals, groups and institutions. At the end of 2015, we had approximately 34,000 employees, 63,000 agents, and thousands of distribution partners, serving 20 million customers. At the end of March 2016, we had $904 billion (US$697 billion) in assets under management and administration, and in the previous 12 months we made more than $24.9 billion in benefits, interest and other payments to our customers. Our principal operations are in Asia, Canada and the United States where we have served customers for more than 100 years. With our global headquarters in Toronto, Canada, we trade as 'MFC' on the Toronto, New York, and the Philippine stock exchanges and under '945' in Hong Kong. Follow Manulife on Twitter @ManulifeNews or visit www.manulife.com or www.johnhancock.com.

SOURCE Manulife Financial Corporation

Media contact: Bev MacLean, Manulife, 416-852-8501, [email protected], @ManulifeNews