Data release
ACC lifted weekly compensation 1.97% and every CPI-linked payment 3.08%, a permanent real cut for long-term claimants
Source: ACC, Changes to ACC client payments from 1 July 2026
From 1 July 2026, ACC raised its weekly income payments 1.97% while lifting its one-off payments 3.08% to keep pace with prices. Anyone past six months on weekly compensation now buys about 1.08% less, and nothing in the scheme ever pays that back.
By Henry Smith · ACC · 2026-06-11
What this means for you Anyone ACC has paid weekly compensation for more than six months buys about 1.08% less from 1 July 2026. There is no catch-up rule, so that loss is permanent. The payment cap starts to bite at roughly $160,300 of income, and at $300,000 nearly half of the promised 80% is not covered at all.
If ACC has been paying you weekly compensation for more than 26 weeks, your payment now buys less than it did last year. Weekly compensation is the money ACC pays to replace your income while an injury keeps you off work. From 1 July 2026, ACC raised it by 1.97%. On the same page, ACC raised its one-off payments, such as funeral grants and lump sums, by 3.08% to keep pace with prices (ACC, 11 June 2026, retrieved 20 August 2026). Set those two rates side by side and the weekly payment has fallen about 1.08% behind prices. Nothing in the scheme ever pays that back.
What did ACC actually announce?
ACC announced its annual payment changes on 11 June 2026, and they took effect on 1 July. Once a claim passes 26 weeks, or about six months, the weekly payment rises 1.97%. That figure comes from the March 2026 Labour Cost Index, the Stats NZ measure of how fast pay rates are rising. So your payment tracks wages, not prices. The most anyone can now be paid is $2,466.20 a week before tax (ACC, 11 June 2026, retrieved 20 August 2026).
The one-off payments moved differently. These are single, untaxed payments made when an injury leaves lasting damage: the Independence Allowance and the lump sum payments. Both rise 3.08%. That figure comes from the March 2026 Consumers Price Index, the official measure of what households pay for everyday goods and services. Funeral grants rise to $8,236.40 (ACC, retrieved 20 August 2026).
Survivor's grants, the one-off payments made when someone dies in an accident, rise by the same 3.08%. The new figures are $8,830.47 for a partner and $4,415.25 for each child under 18 and each other dependant (ACC, retrieved 20 August 2026).
The same announcement also cuts the interest ACC pays when it runs late with a payment. From 1 July 2026 that rate falls from 5.78% to 4.413% a year (ACC, retrieved 20 August 2026). More on that below.
One piece of background makes the rest of this make sense. Weekly compensation pays up to 80% of what you earned before your injury, before tax (ACC, retrieved 20 August 2026). The annual rise only applies once a claim passes 26 weeks. Before that, your payment is still set from what you were earning just before you got hurt. So the people this rise reaches are the seriously injured.
How big is the gap, really?
Which payments kept up with prices?
The two rates sit a few paragraphs apart in ACC's announcement, and it never compares them. The gap is one subtraction: 3.08 minus 1.97 is 1.11 percentage points. What matters is which payments landed on which side. ACC's own figures show that.
| Payment | 1 July 2025 | Rise applied | 1 July 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Funeral grant | $7,990.30 | × 1.0308 (prices) | $8,236.40 |
| Survivor's grant, partner | $8,566.62 | × 1.0308 (prices) | $8,830.47 |
| Maximum weekly compensation | $2,418.55 | × 1.0197 (wages) | $2,466.20 |
Sources: ACC 2025 rates, 16 June 2025, and ACC 2026 rates, 11 June 2026, both retrieved 20 August 2026. Each 2026 figure is the 2025 figure times the rise, to the cent.
Every one-off payment on the page moved with prices. The payment people actually live on moved with the smaller number. Had the weekly maximum risen with prices as well, it would now be $2,493.04 rather than $2,466.20 (ACC 2025 rates and ACC 2026 rates, both retrieved 20 August 2026). For someone on the maximum that is about $27 a week, roughly a top-up grocery shop, gone every week from here on.
Will next year's rise fix it?
No. Next July's rise, whatever it turns out to be, gets applied on top of this year's lower figure. There is no catch-up rule. So even if wages matched prices perfectly every year from now on, the 1.08% never comes back. The gap does not have to repeat to be permanent. It only had to happen once.
It has not always gone this way. In 2024 and 2025 the wage-linked rise ran slightly ahead of the price-linked one, by 0.12 and then 0.36 percentage points (ACC 2024 rates and ACC 2025 rates, both retrieved 20 August 2026). The 2026 round wiped out both of those small gains at once and kept going.
Add up the three years in the chart below. Weekly compensation is up 9.26% in total. The price-linked payments are up 9.94% (ACC 2024, ACC 2025 and ACC 2026 announcements, all retrieved 20 August 2026). Someone paid through all three rounds now sits 0.61% behind prices, and the whole of that shortfall opened up this year.
Chart: the adjustments ACC applied at each 1 July round, as published in its client payment announcements for 2024, 2025 and 2026, all retrieved 20 August 2026.
| From 1 July | Weekly compensation (wage index) | One-off payments (price index) | Gap | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | +4.14% | +4.02% | +0.12 pts | ACC |
| 2025 | +2.89% | +2.53% | +0.36 pts | ACC |
| 2026 | +1.97% | +3.08% | -1.11 pts | ACC |
All three announcements retrieved 20 August 2026. The gap column is our subtraction.
What if I earn more than $160,300?
ACC promises to replace 80% of the income you earned before your injury. The $2,466.20 weekly maximum (ACC, retrieved 20 August 2026) puts a ceiling on that promise. On a steady wage, the ceiling takes full effect at about $160,303 a year. Earn more than that and ACC replaces none of the extra.
| Earnings before the injury | Share of income ACC replaces | Slice of the 80% promise missing |
|---|---|---|
| $160,303 | 80.0% | 0% |
| $180,000 | 71.2% | 10.9% |
| $200,000 | 64.1% | 19.8% |
| $250,000 | 51.3% | 35.9% |
| $300,000 | 42.7% | 46.6% |
QuoteHub arithmetic on ACC's published $2,466.20 maximum, retrieved 20 August 2026, assuming the same pay every week of the year. The $160,303 line is the income at which 80% of your pay first hits the cap. Take someone on $200,000. That is $3,846.15 a week, so 80% of it would be $3,076.92, but the cap pays $2,466.20. They get 64.1% of their old income.
Two things stand out. The cap itself rose by the same 1.97%, so it is losing buying power along with every payment beneath it. And the missing slice grows fast. At $300,000 of income before the injury, almost half of the promised 80% simply does not exist.
What if ACC pays me late?
The quietest line in the announcement may be the most expensive for one group. When ACC pays weekly compensation more than a month late, it pays interest on the money it owes. That rate falls from 5.78% to 4.413% on 1 July 2026, a 23.7% cut in the rate itself (ACC, retrieved 20 August 2026).
Two years ago the rate was 6.967% (ACC, retrieved 20 August 2026). Money ACC owes you now earns interest at a rate 36.7% below that 2024 peak. The claims that build up large backdated sums are the long-running, disputed ones. So this cut mostly lands on the same people taking the 1.97%.
What does this mean for my cover?
If you earn under roughly $160,300 and your injury is an accident, ACC's 80% replacement is still a strong first layer. This announcement is about its edges. Past 26 weeks, your payment moves with wages rather than with prices. Recovery from a serious injury is measured in years, and 2026 shows the gap can run against you by more than a point in a single one.
Private income protection exists for the two gaps this announcement puts numbers on. One is the slice above the cap, which ACC replaces nothing of. The other is illness. ACC is an accident scheme, so it pays nothing for sickness, at any income. A cancer diagnosis costs you the same payslip as a fall off a ladder, with none of the payments on this page attached. For the diagnosis itself, trauma cover pays a lump sum whether or not ACC is involved.
Read the survivor grants the same way. The $8,830.47 partner grant is paid once, and only if the death is accidental (ACC, retrieved 20 August 2026). It is not sized to a mortgage or to years of household income. That sizing job is what life insurance is for.
What we could not check
ACC says the two rises come from the March 2026 wage and price indexes, but it does not name the exact Stats NZ series or publish the index numbers. We did not check 1.97% and 3.08% against Stats NZ. They are the rates ACC says it applied, which is what injured people actually receive, but we take the maths behind them on trust.
There is a fair argument against our headline. Weekly compensation replaces a wage. Tying it to a wage index means injured people do as well, or as badly, as the workers they used to be. On that reading, 2026 is simply a year in which pay trailed prices for everyone. The counter: a worker can ask for a raise, change jobs or pick up hours. Someone on a claim cannot. The index is the whole of their outcome. Both readings fit the numbers above.
ACC does not say how many of its clients are past 26 weeks, so we cannot say how many people this affects. Our $160,303 line assumes the same pay every week of the year. ACC works out earnings differently for the first four weeks, for people whose pay varies and for the self-employed, so the cap bites at a different point on different claims. We could not confirm the publication date of the 1 July 2024 announcement, so its figures are cited without one. And ACC does not show how it arrived at the 4.413% interest rate.
Sources
- Changes to ACC client payments from 1 July 2026, ACC, 11 June 2026
- Changes to client payments from 1 July 2025, ACC, 16 June 2025
- Changes to client payments from 1 July 2024, ACC
- Calculating weekly compensation for employees, ACC
Talk to a licensed adviser about what this means for you · free, no obligation.
Explore related pages: Life Insurance, Income Protection, Health Insurance, Trauma Insurance, Referral.