BIS
Australia has fast payments — but other countries use them much more
Australians made 1.66 billion fast payments in 2024, but BIS data show usage per person remains well below several international leaders.
More analysis
BIS
Australians make 768 cashless payments a year
New BIS data show Australians make more than two cashless payments per person every day, with cards accounting for three-quarters of transactions.
General Insurance
Home insurance premiums keep rising — but APRA data show no profit windfall
Home insurance is becoming increasingly expensive, but new APRA data show the householders insurance service result fell from a $1.15 billion profit to a small loss in 2025–26.
Life Insurance
Mental health claims are becoming a superannuation cost problem
Mental-health-related TPD claims are surging, placing pressure on insurance premiums inside superannuation and creating a new tension with retirement adequacy.
Private Health Insurance
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%.
Private Health Insurance
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.
Competition
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.
Superannuation
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.
Reserve Bank of Australia
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.
Competition
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
Competition
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
Housing
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
Labour Market
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