Zurich Insurance has agreed to buy Australia and New Zealand Banking Group's life insurance arm for $2.85 billion, its biggest foray into Australia and its third in the last two years.
The deal gives the Swiss insurer the top spot in a market attractive to global players due to its robust economy and low penetration.
It will also help Australia's fourth biggest lender move ahead with a long-planned exit from non-core operations.
Zurich, Europe's fifth-biggest insurer, also bought Macquarie Group's life insurance unit for an undisclosed sum in 2016 and the Cover-More Group for $554m in April.
Together with its purchase of ANZ's OnePath, it will now command 19% of Australia's retail life insurance market.
As part of the agreement, it will also gain access to ANZ's six million customers through a 20 year distribution agreement to sell life insurance.
The deal "provides a highly cash-generative business that will add to our cash remittances....and support dividend growth beyond that implied by our existing plan", Zurich's chief executive Mario Greco said in a statement.
It will increase cash flows by around $225m over the 2017-2019 planning period, Zurich said, adding that the deal would be paid for with existing cash and senior debt.
The acquisition is the largest since Greco took over at Zurich last year.
Brought in from Italy's Generali to engineer a turnaround for the troubled group, Greco has promised to make Zurich leaner and more efficient.
ANZ's sale comes amid a rush of divestments by Australia's biggest banks, under pressure from more stringent capital requirements to slim down.
Banks are also seeking to get back to basics after a series of governance scandals, including one where Commonwealth Bank of Australia was accused of using outdated medical definitions to refuse life insurance payouts that resulted in a backlash against the whole sector.
In September, Australia's biggest lender Commonwealth Bank sold its life insurance unit to Hong Kong-based AIA for $3.1 billion, while the third biggest lender National Australia Bank sold 80% of its life insurance unit to Japan's Nippon Life Insurance last year.
ANZ chief executive Shayne Elliot said in a statement the bank's strategy was to "do a few things and do them incredibly well" and that "we are just exiting, shrinking or partnering on everything else".
The bank sold its pension business in October to Australian pension manager IOOF Holdings for A$975m.
ANZ said it would book an extraordinary loss of about A$520m from the sale of the life insurance business.
