Sunlife Financial vs Manulife

Historically the insurance companies have performed quite well in a market with raising intrest rates. For this reason I have decided to do a quick comparison between these two companies to determine the company I need to investigate further.

	MFC	SLF
EPS	1.74	2.9
Yield	2.68	3.45
Forward P/E	11.6	11.7
P/E TTM	13.66	14.44
Dividend Growth	2%	0
Payout Ratio	32.76	49.66

From a quick glance at both companies they are both trading at favorable evaluations both forward 2016 evaluations and TTM below the market average. Next I looked at the yield, Manulife yields 2.68% while Sun life Financial yields 3.45%. At this point I can almost count Manulife out of the race as right now its yield does not fit the sort of stock I am looking for. I want dividend stocks with a yield greater than 3% and a history or growing that dividend.

I looked at dividend growth next and again Manulife showed only 2% growth per year while Manulife showed 0%. Neither of these two companies have the dividend growth I am looking for.

Finally I took a look at the payout ratio, this was just to see if either company had the excess capital to actually increase the dividend. In both cases the payout ratio is below 60% which means they both have room to grow the dividends. Manulife in particular has the capital to grow the dividend frequently for the near future.

 My opinion for now is that neither Manulife or Sunlife are current buys, neither company has the dividend and growth I am looking for a long term position. Although I don't think I will look at either company in the near future I believe that if you are looking for safety Sunlife may be the better pick as it has a much higher yield and manulife would need to greatly increase their dividend to match that of Sunlife.