Roy Gori, the president and chief executive officer of Manulife, wants to bring the staid life insurance industry out of the “dark ages.”

In an exclusive interview with BNN Bloomberg, Gori, who took the reins of Canada’s largest life insurer last fall, said the industry is ripe for digital disruption, and that he intends to lead the charge.

“Our industry really, quite frankly, operates today in a very similar way to the way it operated 15 years ago,” Gori said on Thursday. “I’ve often described the fact that we’re still in the dark ages: to apply for an insurance product, it’s still typically is through a 16-page application form with 128 questions. It’s not really a very modern, conducive way or engaging way to actually talk to a customer.”

Gori said the laser focus on increased digitization will help inform the company’s plans for potential divestitures through the next decade.

“The reality is that you have to really digitize your operations to survive in the future. For us, manual processes, or businesses that really are supported by manual processes, are ones that won’t exist five, ten, fifteen years from now,” he said. “So we are using a lens around digitization as to assessing whether these are businesses that we want to be prioritizing and investing in versus those we perhaps don’t.”

Minimizing the number of labour-intensive business units is core to Gori’s plan to cut $1 billion worth of annual costs by 2022. Gori said in spite of the cost-cutting goal, the company won’t put the brakes on research and development spending, instead emphasizing prudence as to where it allocates cash in other parts of the business.

“We’re going to continue to invest: we set out a bold ambition for cost-cutting, but at the same time we’ve earmarked about a billion dollars’ worth of [spending] for future growth around strategic initiatives,” he said. “A lot of that will go towards new technologies and new ways of operating and, quite frankly, interacting with customers so that we can really drive the transformation of our business.”

Gori admitted Manulife had attempted, and failed to, instill a spirit of sustained cost-controls in the past, but expressed confidence his plan would take root across the organization.

“We’ve been focused on costs in the past, but the honest truth is that it hasn’t become a part of the culture of the organization,” he said.

“What we’re embarking on now is a much greater focus around costs, so we can actually embed this in the culture of the company.”

Gori conceded the proof is in the pudding when it comes to implementing the plan, and allowed for the fact overhauling the culture of a company nearly as old as confederation won’t be as simple as flipping a switch.

“Everyone’s talking about transformation, and I don’t think I know of any company that’s not transforming itself, and it’s easier said than done,” he said. “Cultural change really needs to underpin a transformation of any type.”

“We’re trying to drive this sense in our company that the time is now, and you have to embrace change now: when you start changing when it’s necessary or when you really have to, it’s often too late.”