ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has set off the starting gun for one of its biggest privatization initiatives, whereby international investment banking firms will be invited to tender for the task of disposing State Life Insurance Corporation (SLIC), the largest life insurance firm in Pakistan.
The Privatization Commission has issued advertisement in major national and international newspapers this week in order to invite financial advisors to submit their technical and financial bids before August 13, 2026. Firms can bid alone or team up in consortiums, but the Commission wants heavyweights only it prefers advisers who rank in recognised global mergers and acquisitions league tables and carry a proven record of closing deals of similar scale.
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Whoever wins the mandate faces no small task: building a multidisciplinary transaction team, running sell-side due diligence, testing investor appetite through market sounding, courting potential buyers, designing the transaction structure, recommending how Islamabad should divest its stake, and marketing SLIC to the world, all while keeping the process transparent enough to survive public scrutiny. Interested firms can download the detailed Request for Proposal, evaluation criteria and draft Financial Advisory Services Agreement from the Privatisation Commission’s website.
Privatisation Faces Legal Hurdles
This tender does not arrive out of nowhere. The Cabinet Committee on Privatisation and the Federal Cabinet have already cleared the sale of up to 20 percent of the state’s stake in SLIC. But there is a catch: SLIC must first convert from a corporation into a company, a legal transformation the Commerce Ministry now has to execute before any share sale can proceed.
State Life itself has pushed back on rushing the process, telling federal authorities that any move toward corporatisation or privatisation demands rigorous legal, financial and strategic due diligence carried out strictly under the existing legislative framework.
Insurance Law Overhaul Underway
Lawmakers are moving in parallel. The National Assembly’s Standing Committee on Commerce, led by Jawad Hanif, has approved the Insurance Bill 2026 and sent it forward for passage, though Senator Anusha Rahman Khan’s Senate committee has yet to take it up. The bill aims to tighten regulatory oversight by the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan, open the insurance market to fresh investment, add policyholder protections, create a dispute-resolution channel through the Federal Insurance Ombudsperson, and allow independent third-party evaluations under SECP watch.
The reform push traces back to February 2024, when the Special Investment Facilitation Council’s Apex Committee endorsed sweeping insurance-sector changes, including luring international insurers into the market. The Commerce Ministry’s consultations with the SECP, Finance Division and Insurance Association of Pakistan followed, producing proposed amendments to the Insurance Ordinance 2000.
Complexity soon took over. When the Cabinet Committee on the Disposal of Legislative Measures examined around 220 proposed amendments in December 2025, it came to the conclusion that there could be no quick fix and needed a completely new law. This was provided in form of the Draft Insurance Act 2026 by the Commerce Division, which received approval from the Law Ministry in March, CCLC on March 10, and the Federal Cabinet on March 31.
With the advisory tender now live, SLIC’s privatisation has moved from cabinet paperwork to a real, dated transaction one investors, employees and policyholders will be watching closely as August’s deadline approaches.
