Joint venture not such a bad business

One piece of received wisdom worth putting into perspective is the suggestion that the ANZ and ING joint venture is in some fashion an underachiever, in the life segment at least.

Over the first five years (and the period for which satisfactory data is available) the ANZ and ING joint venture ended up with a life insurance market share, based on flows, of 17 per cent at December 2007 (and the last period for which APRA has published insurer-specific data) and with flows of $9 billion. ING/ANZ ranked third in the market based on flows.

Based on assets, then, of $32 billion the ING/ANZ joint venture also ranked third, behind AMP and AXA.

In 2002, when ANZ and ING first entered into their joint venture, the business accounted for 13 per cent of premium flows and 10 per cent of sector assets.