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Two Partners Life medical price rises in nine months, and a profit that still fell a third

Source: Daiichi Life Group, Financial Results FY2025 conference call presentation

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.

By Henry Smith · Insurers · 2026-05-18

What this means for you Partners Life earned its Tokyo parent a third less in the year to March 2026 even though its policy book grew, a mix that points at claims and the cost of new business rather than a shrinking insurer. Medical customers absorbed one price rise inside that year, and another one lands from April 2026. This is a shareholder profit measure, not a solvency measure, so it says nothing about the insurer's ability to pay claims.

Written by Henry Smith · Reviewed by Smiths Insurance & KiwiSaver, licensed Financial Advice Provider (FSP712931)

Partners Life medical customers have taken two price rises in nine months. Existing Private Medical Cover renewed at increases of around 20% at policy anniversaries from 22 July 2025 (RiskinfoNZ, 17 June 2025). A further 16.6% on Partners Protection Plan Private Medical Cover, and 2.0% on Partners Life Journey Plan medical cover, reaches each policy on its renewal date from 22 April 2026 (RiskinfoNZ, 17 March 2026). Both sit on top of the usual step up in price that comes with being a year older.

The year between those two rises is the year Partners Life's Japanese owner has just reported on. Even with the first increase inside it, the New Zealand business earned Dai-ichi Life a third less than the year before: ¥3.4 billion, down from ¥5.0 billion (Daiichi Life Group, 15 May 2026). Around it, the group set a profit record for the third year running.

So the first increase went through and profit still fell by a third, which is why a second one followed three weeks after that year ended. Dai-ichi never says what caused it: no line for Partners Life on the slide that accounts for the change in group profit, no sentence in the commentary, and no question in the published summary of the 45-minute analyst call (Daiichi Life Group Q&A summary, 15 May 2026).

What did Tokyo actually publish?

Every figure in this section comes from Dai-ichi's results presentation of 15 May 2026, where Partners Life appears as PNZ on a year running April 2025 to March 2026. The ¥3.4 billion sits on slide 47 of a 64-page deck, the only public profit reading for that year we could find.

Overseas business	Adjusted profit, year to March 2026
Protective, United States	¥79.3 billion, up 38%
TAL, Australia	¥35.6 billion, down 5%
Dai-ichi Life Vietnam	¥10.0 billion, down 24%
Partners Life, New Zealand	¥3.4 billion, down 33%
Smaller Asian units	¥0.5 billion loss, after a ¥2.0 billion profit

No business named in the report fell as far as Partners Life, and none got less explanation. Protective was the only overseas insurer that grew, and group adjusted profit rose from ¥439.5 billion to ¥551.5 billion. Partners Life's own sales went the other way: new business premium, the yearly premium from policies sold during the year, rose 23.0%, and in-force premium, the yearly premium from every policy on the books, rose 15.2%, from ¥55.7 billion to ¥64.2 billion. Both are counted in yen, so currency movements flatter them, and taking that out leaves rises of 14.5% and 7.3% (same presentation). The book grew. The profit fell.

Adjusted profit is the measure Dai-ichi uses to show shareholders what each business earned. It takes the official accounts, strips out market swings and one-off items, and sets the dividend (same document, slide 49). A one-third fall in it is not a presentation quirk. The business made a third less money.

More policies, less profit: what causes that?

Claims and the up-front cost of writing new business are the two candidates. An insurer that is shrinking and earning less is an ordinary story. Partners Life is the opposite: more premium coming in, a third less profit going out. For every ¥100 of annual premium on its books, it produced ¥9.0 of adjusted profit last year and ¥5.3 this year, a 41% squeeze in twelve months (same presentation).

Interest rates do not explain it. Dai-ichi strips rate movements out of adjusted profit before reporting it, and what it took out was small either way: ¥0.9 billion one year, ¥0.2 billion the next (same document, slide 49). What is left is the ordinary business of selling policies and paying claims.

Two explanations fit, and the deck offers neither. The first is claims. Partners Life told advisers it paid 16% more in health insurance claims in its 2024 financial year than in its 2023 one (the same June 2025 report). The second is growth itself: a new life or health policy costs an insurer money up front, in commission and in assessing the applicant, and only earns it back over the years that follow, and Partners Life wrote 23% more of it.

The timing points at claims. The roughly 20% medical increase landed inside the reported year, and profit fell by a third anyway.

What happened to the 2022 promise?

It now needs profit to jump 68% in a single year. Dai-ichi paid NZ$980 million for Partners Life's parent company in August 2022, about ¥83.0 billion at the exchange rate in the announcement. It told shareholders the business was expected to contribute "$NZ 67 million (approximately JPY 5.7 billion)" of group adjusted profit in the year ending March 2027 (Dai-ichi Life Holdings, 12 August 2022).

A year ago that target looked comfortable, with ¥5.0 billion covering 88% of it and two years to run. This year's ¥3.4 billion is 60% of it with one year left, which is where that 68% comes from. Measured against the ¥83.0 billion paid, the return fell from 6.0% to 4.1%. The deck does none of this arithmetic, and its forecast for the year ahead folds New Zealand into an "Oceania" line, attaching no number and no expectation to Partners Life at all.

The two reported bars below come from the same 15 May 2026 presentation. The third is what the 2022 announcement expected, not a current forecast.

What does this mean for my cover?

For anyone holding Partners Life medical cover, the direction is the finding. Two increases were announced within nine months, and the owner's accounts show that the first one did not stop the New Zealand business earning a third less. The 16.6% rise reaches each policy on its renewal date from 22 April 2026 (the same March notice). Whether it was enough will not be visible in public until Dai-ichi reports the year to March 2027.

Keep the number in its lane, though. Adjusted profit is what the owner earns, not a measure of whether the insurer can pay a claim. That is solvency, the capital an insurer must hold against the claims it expects, and the Reserve Bank supervises it separately. A falling profit line is a pricing signal, not a safety signal.

For anyone the increase pushes towards switching, the trade is underwriting. Moving medical cover means being assessed again: the new insurer asks about health as it is today, and can exclude anything that has developed since the old policy started. What each insurer actually covers, side by side, is what decides whether a lower price is genuinely cheaper.

Where could this be wrong?

The main document has rough edges. It carries a Japanese production note saying AI-generated content may contain errors ("AI生成コンテンツは誤りを含む可能性があります"), and Dai-ichi's investor library lists a correction dated 18 May 2026 to chart units and period labels (Daiichi Life Group presentation library). Its figures also round: it labels the Partners Life change as (33%) while the two amounts it prints round to 32%. That does not change the size of the fall.

One label matters more. The premium table in that presentation is headed "As of Mar-25" and "As of Dec-25", but Partners Life's year ends in March, so the ¥64.2 billion may be a December 2025 reading. If so, that growth happened in nine months, which sharpens the contrast rather than softening it.

Everything here is in yen, on Dai-ichi's definition of adjusted profit, not audited New Zealand accounts. Partners Life's own accounts for the year to 31 March 2026 were not public when we wrote this; once filed, they are the New Zealand dollar record. The 2022 comparison keeps that announcement's exchange rate.

Partners Life's own announcement pages returned only titles to us, so both price rises and the 16% claims figure rest on RiskinfoNZ, a named trade publication reporting what Partners Life told advisers.

Finally, Dai-ichi gives no reason for the fall. Claims and the cost of growth are our inference. The silence is the finding, not evidence for either.

What this means for your cover

Financial strength, published benefit limits and who underwrites which brand, side by side. Compare New Zealand insurers

Sources

Every source below was read and checked on 21 August 2026.

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