Private health costs are rising — but insurer profits fell 16.6%
APRA data show private health insurance claims rose faster than premium revenue in 2025–26, while industry after-tax profit fell 16.6%.
Nick Hossack
Private health cover grows as hospital out-of-pocket costs jump 7.5%
More Australians are holding private health insurance, but APRA data show average hospital out-of-pocket costs rose 7.5% over the year to $513.24 per episode.
How concentrated is Australia's MySuper market?
Australia’s MySuper market contains 52 products, but assets are much more concentrated than that headline number suggests. The ten largest products hold 74.5% of MySuper assets, while the market has the same concentration as roughly 13 equally sized products.
What do we know about superannuation fees? Some core data
APRA publishes detailed information on individual superannuation funds and their basic superannuation products (called MySuper products). Bringing those datasets together provides a useful starting point for understanding how large Australia's major funds are, what they charge members for administration, and whether greater scale is associated with lower fees.
Three (blunt) politically relevant messages from the latest RBA Minutes
The latest RBA Minutes contain three unusually clear political messages on interest rates, Australia’s productivity problem and the weakening housing market.
HBF collects almost half of Western Australia's private health insurance premiums
APRA's private health insurance performance data provides premium revenue for individual insurers across each state and territory.
Benchmark Analytics calculations show substantial differences in market concentration across Australia.
The standout among the larger states is Western Australia, where HBF accounts for 46.7% of private health insurance premium
Five health insurers collect 80% of Australia's private health insurance premiums
APRA's latest private health insurance data provides financial performance information for individual insurers, including premium revenue by state and territory.
Summing those state figures shows Australia's 29 private health insurers collected $31.10 billion in health insurance premium revenue in 2024–25.
The market is dominated
Australian households - second most indebted in the world
The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) provides internationally comparable data on household credit, debt servicing and residential property prices. Together, the three measures provide a useful picture of both household debt and the value of the housing assets sitting behind it.
At the end of 2025, Australian household debt was
Australia has more workers, but barely more work
The ABS Labour Force Survey shows employment fell by 15,800 people in July, while the unemployment rate increased to 4.5%. Monthly hours worked fell more sharply, down 0.6%.
The more revealing figures, however, are over the past year. Australia has 191,900 more employed people than in
Canberra workers among the few to beat inflation
The ABS Wage Price Index measures changes in wage rates for a fixed basket of jobs, unaffected by changes in employment composition, hours worked or employee characteristics.
In addition to a national figure, the ABS breaks down wage changes by state and territory and by industry sector.
To calculate industry-
Wage numbers released - two ugly statistics for the Government
The ABS Wage Price Index rose 0.8 per cent in the June quarter 2026 and 3.2 per cent over the year. Over the last year, however, inflation has increased by 3.9%, so real wages have fallen.
In fact, workers have still not recovered the loss in real
Scary - absolute decline in number of businesses that employ people
The ABS Counts of Australian Businesses publication measures the stock of actively trading businesses in Australia, together with business entries, exits and survival.
The latest release, published on 18 August, covers the four financial years from July 2022 to June 2026.
The figures are drawn from the ABS Business Register,