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SGIO was entirely sold in 1994 for $165 million and this was followed by the acquisition of SGIO by NRMA in 1998. SGIO provides both personal and commercial insurances and is one of Western Australia’s largest general insurance companies. It started to shift its main focus towards life insurance in 1932. This was shown in its company magazine Insurance Lines where the pages began to be dominated by information regarding life insurance instead of its previous main focus which was worker’s compensation. By the 1970’s life insurance began to be SGIO’s main achievement and focal point.

Practicing Citations
Source 1: This article was published by The Age which is a newspaper based in Melbourne Victoria.

Source 2: This article was published by the International Review of Applied Economics Journal which is an academic journal and is peer-reviewed.

Source 3: This article was published under Deakin University which is a top university in Australia.

Source 4: This paper was published as a PhD Doctorate thesis from Griffith University which is considered to be a top university in Australia.

Source 5: This paper was published as a master’s thesis and therefore had to go through rigorous checks and supervision from experts in the field.

Answers to Module 7 Questions
1. A photograph that I took of a television 2. Yes it is my own work 3. JPEG 4. Public Domain Licence 5. Category: Televisions 6. Television mounted onto wall

History
SGIO began as the State Accident Insurance Office and was later named the State Government Insurance Office (SGIO). It was entirely sold in 1994 for $165 million and this was followed by the acquisition of SGIO by NRMA in 1998. SGIO held a monopoly in its early days in workers compensation insurance which made it a strong competitor. SGIO now provides both personal and commercial insurances and is one of Western Australia’s largest general insurance companies. The company was initially registered as a general insurer and first started to shift its main focus towards life insurance in 1932. This was shown in its company magazine Insurance Lines where the pages began to be dominated by information regarding life insurance instead of its previous main focus which was worker’s compensation insurance. By the 1970’s life insurance began to be SGIO’s main achievement and focal point. Because of this expansion into different areas of insurance, SGIO became a main competitor in all areas of insurance. In the 1970’s the Queensland office formed the SGIO Building Society, after a series of other Queensland Building Societies were united together, and with this they began to incorporate a strategy that would help begin their privatisation. This strategy included acquiring the Permanent Finance Corporation and becoming a major shareholder in the Bank of Queensland.

Privatisation
SGIO was initially owned by the Western Australian Government and was to be privatised by the selling of shares to the public. The Western Australian Government wanted to have most of the shares to be made available to Western Australian investors and have a small portion go to institutions. Shares were initially sold for a fixed price of $1.00. The State Government offered between $150 million and $160 million of shares and intended to sell 100% of the operation. However, after an initial period of issuing shares, takeover bids were shortly commenced and SGIO was bought by other insurance companies. SGIO’s core business was initially restricted by state boundaries and before their privatisation, SGIO used a strategy of diversification to enable them to have a wider variety of business areas and they also went through managerial and structural changes. With SGIO’s initial focus being worker’s compensation insurance, the company needed to make these changes of diversification into different business areas as their core service/product was a government monopoly despite there being a push for the company to be privatised.

Sponsorship
SGIO has been a major sponsor for the AFL team West Coast Eagles. The sponsorship started in 1988 and ended in the year of 2018 and has been one of the longest commercial partnerships in Australian sport. SGIO became the West Coast Eagle’s sole major sponsor in 2000 after their 12-year anniversary of being with the club (NRMA 2000). Because of this, the SGIO logo was incorporated onto the West Coast Eagles sports uniforms which was part of the company’s advertisement and marketing.

Technological advancements (the introduction of computers)
SGIO was one of the first three government agencies in Queensland to incorporate computers into their work force. Prior to using computers, SGIO, along with other companies, used a punch card machine dating back to 1937 for calculation and accounting purposes. The beginning of the installation of computers for SGIO was in 1956 when a committee was launched in order to investigate the suitability of computers for this company. The decision towards purchasing a computer was led by the difficulty that SGIO was having in regard to how much their old machinery (specifically the punch card machines) could handle with the volume of business they had. These punch card machines were limited in what they could do for the business and the company ultimately needed a machine with more range in its capabilities. Not only that, but because these older machines could not do as much as the company needed, it cost SGIO more money in hours worked overtime as more manual labour was needed to complete these tasks. However, these computers ended up causing a number of issues and complications in the beginning period of its installation. The costs of installing the computer and having to buy other equipment exceeded the company’s expectations. In addition to this, workers typically had a lack of experience working with these machines which meant that not only the quality of work was going down but also quantity as well. Employees had to work additional hours and even had to work on weekends in order to keep up with the work that they were expected to do during normal¬¬ business hours. SGIO did however manage these issues and could see real benefits that the computer would give them in terms of expanding their abilities for different areas of work and making things easier in the future once training was implemented.

Category: Business Category: Insurance Category: Western Australia