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Since the 1980s a wave of demutualizations has occurred across the financial services sector from stock exchanges to building societies, savings and loans associations and insurers. In both Australia and South Africa, this has had a marked effect on the life insurance markets that had been dominated by mutual life insurers for 150 years. This article adopts a case study approach to analyse the key drivers of organizational change. It examines the experiences of the Australian Mutual Provident (Australia's oldest and largest life insurance mutual) and Sanlam (the second-largest mutual life office in South Africa) as they proceeded down the path to demutualization. Firm-specific, market-specific and country-specific forces are identified as placing pressure on existing mutual structures.

In the 1980s and 1990s the demutualization of building societies, life insurers and general insurers was a re-occurring theme in many countries. In Australia, the demutualisation of major life insurers was linked to the deregulation of the financial sector. The experience of Australian life insurers represents an interesting case study on the impact of regulatory transition. The lifting of restrictions changed the institutional environment within which life insurers operated. In doing so it precipitated changes in the strategies and organizational structures of these financial intermediaries and the disappearance of the industry’s long established mutual tradition.