Insurance Australia Group (IAG) won’t confirm whether it’s interested in snapping up the general insurance operations of Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA).
Insurance Business reached out to the general insurance giant after it was reported that Bank of America had been tapped to assist IAG in a possible bid for the CBA unit.
According to the DataRoom column of The Australian, Bank of America is understood to have been brought in ahead of the 2021 kickoff of CBA’s general insurance offloading. The publication said the official sales process, which is reportedly overseen by Goldman Sachs, is slated to commence in Q1.
Read more: CBA in $886 million insurance sale
Responding to Insurance Business’s query, a spokesperson for IAG stated: “As Australia’s largest general insurer, IAG does look at M&A (mergers and acquisitions) activities in our sector. However, we don’t have any comment specifically in response to [the abovementioned] article.”
Earlier this month, CBA rival Westpac Banking Corporation agreed to sell Westpac General Insurance Limited and Westpac General Insurance Services Limited to Allianz for $725 million.
It’s no secret that both Westpac and CBA are cleaning up their respective portfolios to focus on banking. CBA already previously let go of its life insurance business, which is now under the umbrella of Hong Kong-headquartered AIA Group.
