ANZ has flagged a move away from producing its own life insurance products as it considers the sale of its life insurance business.
In announcing its annual results, ANZ stated it had begun a strategic review of the Bank’s retail and wealth business in Asia as well as its wealth businesses in Australia and New Zealand.
As a result of these reviews, the bank concluded that while it should continue to distribute life insurance and investment products to its clients it did not need to manufacture those products.
ANZ also stated it was examining various options for the Australian wealth business and ‘…this includes the possible sale of the life insurance, advice and superannuation and investments businesses in Australia’.
The bank’s New Zealand wealth business would be considered separately in 2017 with the announcement following that of October 31 in which ANZ indicated it would sell its retail banking and wealth businesses in Singapore, Hong Kong, China, Taiwan and Indonesia.
A media release detailing the shift away from life insurance, and the bank’s annual results, stated a strategic priority was to ‘…create a simpler, better capitalised, better balanced and more agile bank’. To do this ANZ would ‘…reduce operating costs and risks by removing product and management complexity’ and ‘…exiting low return and non-core businesses’, it stated.
Statutory profit for ANZ for the year ending 30 September 2016 was down 24% to $5.7 billion with cash profit down 18% to $5.9 billion.
ANZ is the second major bank to move out of life insurance following the sale of 80% of MLC Life by NAB to Nippon Life, which was completed by 1 October 2016.
