Insurers news

Insurer news moves policyholders even when nothing arrives in the post: ownership changes, book transfers, rating actions and product withdrawals all change who stands behind an existing policy. These stories follow the entity, not the brand, the licensed underwriter named on the policy schedule, and every financial-strength grade links to the insurer’s own disclosure. Current ratings for every licensed NZ insurer are in our financial-strength explorer.

New Zealand insurers news from QuoteHub, with the source document behind every story. 12 stories.

Four Of The Five Insurers You Can Buy From Directly Now Sell The Same Thing, And Call It The Same Name, Insurers, 2026-09-09. AA Life, Chubb Life, Southern Cross Life and nib all publish a product called Life & Living. Pinnacle is the outlier. A bundle is easier to buy than a menu, and much harder to compare. Source: The five direct insurers' own product pages.
One owner will hold 640,000 lives, and the adviser panel gets shorter, Insurers, 2026-09-08. Partners Group Holdings has agreed to buy Fidelity Life for $630 million. Both sell almost entirely through advisers, and the companies put the combined book at more than 640,000 lives. Nothing changes on your policy. What changes is how many separate owners an adviser can quote. Source: Dai-ichi Life Group, Notice regarding acquisition of Fidelity Life.
If Foundation Life owed you money, it is now at Inland Revenue and there is no deadline to claim it, Insurers, 2026-08-20. Foundation Life cancelled every whole-of-life and endowment policy, the old savings-style life cover, and paid out the cash inside them. Anyone who did not return their paperwork by 30 June 2026 had their payment handed to Inland Revenue instead. Inland Revenue has published no closing date for claiming it back. Source: Foundation Life, News and announcements.
Cover that came with the job ends with the job, and 43% of insured New Zealanders hold it that way, Insurers, 2026-08-14. Of the New Zealanders who hold cover, 43% get it through a workplace or group scheme, so a redundancy can take the insurance and the income on the same day. Behind that sits a thinner base of cover than most of the OECD carries, 0.8% of the economy against a 3.5% average. That 4.4 times gap is real, and smaller than it looks. Source: FSC, The overlooked role of insurance in New Zealand's health system.
Your Resolution Life policy is moving to Asteron, and the contract moves with it, Insurers, 2026-08-13. The transfer is due in 2027. Your sum insured, your exclusions and any health loading carry across untouched. The rating upgrade in the headlines belongs to Asteron's customers rather than yours, and one clause in the transfer law binds you to a split you never sign. Source: Asteron Life, Fitch places Asteron Life on Rating Watch Positive.
Nobody signs off your health premium rise. Southern Cross's next boss comes from a country where a minister does, Insurers, 2026-07-29. Jan O'Keefe joins Southern Cross in February 2027 from an Australian insurer that cannot charge older members more and cannot lift prices without a minister's approval. New Zealand has neither rule, and the Society has no permanent chief executive for four months in between. Source: Southern Cross Health Society.
Health premiums are up 15 to 30 percent in two years, and the Reserve Bank is now testing what insurers can absorb, Insurers, 2026-06-30. For the first time the Bank has ordered the 3 largest health insurers, alongside the 5 largest life insurers, to work backwards from their own failure. No policy changes because of it. The squeeze it is testing for, steeper premiums and narrower cover, is already on renewal notices. Source: RBNZ, 2026 Banking and Insurance Stress Tests - Scenarios.
Life insurers' profit jumped 47%. Health insurers paid out more than they collected., Insurers, 2026-06-01. Life insurers kept 12 cents of profit out of every dollar coming in last year, up from 8.5, because the money from policies grew 5% while the claims bill grew 1%. Health insurers paid out 103 cents per dollar and covered the gap from reserves KPMG says cannot keep absorbing it. Source: KPMG, New Zealand Insurance Update 2026.
Two Partners Life medical price rises in nine months, and a profit that still fell a third, Insurers, 2026-05-18. Private Medical Cover customers renewed at around 20% more from July 2025, and 16.6% more arrives from April 2026. In the year between the two, Partners Life earned its Japanese owner a third less, and Dai-ichi's results never say why. Source: Daiichi Life Group, Financial Results FY2025 conference call presentation.
Health premiums rose almost 20%. AIA paid out less and declined a bigger share of claims, Insurers, 2026-05-12. AIA NZ turned down nine claims in every hundred in 2025, up from eight in 2024, and its total payout fell 4.8% to $790 million. Health claims did grow, by 6.2%, which is about a third of the rise in health insurance prices. At Southern Cross, claims genuinely surged. Source: AIA NZ, AIA NZ pays $790M in total claims in 2025.
Every OneChoice policy is issued by Pinnacle Life, and no fund in New Zealand backs a life insurer that cannot pay, Insurers, 2026-04-15. Buy from the brand and your claim is owed by a company you never dealt with. If it ever could not pay, the law gives life policyholders a walled-off pot of assets and nothing else: no industry fund, no government guarantee. AM Best rates Pinnacle Life B+ (Good), the lowest rung it still calls secure. Source: AM Best, AM Best Affirms Credit Ratings of Pinnacle Life Limited.
FMG's yearly cover increases were wrong for 11 years, and 480 people found out at claim time, Insurers, 2026-02-09. The error sat on 54,642 policies and was worth about $6 a year, far too small for any customer to spot on a renewal notice. A second FMG error charged 3,904 contents customers extra to name belongings that were already covered, an average of $496 each. Both ran for more than a decade before FMG's own systems caught them. Source: FMA, FMG admits to making misleading statements and makes payment of $2.1 million.

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