In the last decade the ownership structure of Australia's life insurance industry has undergone a fundamental change. Traditionally, the sector had been dominated by a group of large mutual associations which had historically been the market leaders. In the space of less than a decade, this form...

In the 1990s Australian governments, both federal and state, committed themselves to a policy of microeconomic reform of which privatisation of key government assets was a major component. Government owned banks and insurance offices were amongst the first institutions to be sold off. The...

Deregulation has been a feature of the evolution of financial markets in the past two decades. Extending this trend has been the move to privatise government-owned financial institutions. In the 1990s, Australian governments progressively sold publicly owned banks and insurance institutions. One...