Decision

Every OneChoice policy rests on Pinnacle Life's B+, one notch above AM Best's vulnerable range

Source: AM Best, AM Best Affirms Credit Ratings of Pinnacle Life Limited

AM Best confirmed Pinnacle Life at B+ (Good) on 15 April 2026: the sixth rung of thirteen, two below Fidelity's A-, and the last rung the agency still calls secure. Every OneChoice policy in New Zealand is issued by Pinnacle, a name most buyers never see.

By Henry Smith · Insurers · 2026-04-15

What this means for you OneChoice life and funeral policies are issued by an insurer sitting on the last secure rung of AM Best's scale, two to three rungs below the insurers behind Fidelity, Chubb and Partners Life. The cover itself does not change. What differs is the company standing behind the claim, which AM Best describes as small, limited in range and heavily dependent on other insurers to carry its risk.

Buy a life or funeral policy from OneChoice and the company that has to pay the claim is not OneChoice. It is Pinnacle Life. Pinnacle holds a B+ (Good) financial strength rating from AM Best, an agency that grades how well placed an insurer is to pay claims. AM Best confirmed that grade on 15 April 2026 (OneChoice, retrieved 20 August 2026; Pinnacle Life, retrieved 20 August 2026).

B+ is the sixth rung on AM Best's thirteen-rung ladder. It is also the last rung the agency still calls secure. One step lower and an insurer is in what AM Best labels the vulnerable range.

Other insurers sit higher. Fidelity Life holds A-, two rungs up (AM Best release, March 2026, retrieved 20 August 2026). Chubb Life and Partners Life both hold A, three rungs up (Chubb Life and Partners Life, both retrieved 20 August 2026). Of the life insurers we could verify, only one sits lower than Pinnacle.

What did AM Best actually say?

On 15 April 2026 the agency reconfirmed two grades for Pinnacle Life Limited. B+ (Good) is the claims-paying grade. A second grade, bbb- (Good), covers whether Pinnacle can meet its own debts. Both carry a stable outlook, meaning AM Best does not expect either to move soon (AM Best release via InsuranceNewsNet, 15 April 2026, retrieved 20 August 2026).

The rest is a scorecard. Pinnacle's capital is adequate. So is its trading performance. Its business profile, meaning how big the company is and how varied its products are, is limited. Its handling of risk is appropriate. Its owner, Greenstone Holdco Pty Limited, neither helps nor hurts the grade (same source).

On capital, AM Best was complimentary. Measured against the risks Pinnacle carries, its capital "was at the strongest level" at the end of the 2025 financial year on the agency's own stress test, Best's Capital Adequacy Ratio (BCAR) (same source).

Then comes the qualifier. That reading "factors in the company's high reliance on third-party reinsurance and small capital base". Reinsurance is insurance for insurers: Pinnacle pays a bigger company to carry much of the risk on its policies. The combination, AM Best says, leaves Pinnacle sensitive to growing too fast, to interest rates moving, and to "shock events" (same source).

The limited business profile comes down to size and range. AM Best cites "small scale operations and its low product and geographic diversification in New Zealand". Pinnacle sells policies that pay out when someone dies: "yearly renewable term life and funeral insurance". It also leans on one sales channel, because "Greenstone remains a key distribution partner and growth driver for Pinnacle Life" (same source).

Nowhere does the release mention OneChoice. That link comes from OneChoice's own small print: "OneChoice insurance products are issued by Pinnacle Life Limited (NZBN 9429030397248) and distributed and promoted by Greenstone Financial Services NZ Limited (NZBN 9429047013582)" (OneChoice, retrieved 20 August 2026).

How does B+ compare with other NZ insurers?

Where does B+ sit on the scale?

Each step on a rating scale is called a notch. AM Best's claims-paying scale, printed on Pinnacle Life's own website, runs A++, A+ (Superior), A, A- (Excellent), B++, B+ (Good), B, B- (Fair), C++, C+ (Marginal), C, C- (Weak), D (Poor). E, F and S also appear, but they are status flags, not grades (Pinnacle Life, retrieved 20 August 2026). Count the grades and there are thirteen. B+ is sixth from the top: five above it, seven below.

The step that matters most is the next one down. Momentum Life prints the same scale and shows B (Fair), the seventh notch, inside AM Best's vulnerable category (Momentum Life, retrieved 20 August 2026). That makes B+ the last secure notch. Pinnacle is not in vulnerable territory, and the stable outlook says AM Best does not expect it to get there. But no rated New Zealand life insurer stands between Pinnacle and that line.

Here is the ladder we could verify.

Scale placements as disclosed by Pinnacle Life, Chubb Life, Partners Life, Fidelity Life and AM Best, retrieved 20 August 2026.

Insurer	Rating	Agency	Notch from top	Range
Chubb Life Insurance New Zealand	A (Excellent)	A.M. Best	3 of 13	Secure
Partners Life	A (Excellent)	AM Best	3 of 13	Secure
Fidelity Life	A- (Excellent)	AM Best	4 of 13	Secure
Pinnacle Life, issues all OneChoice policies	B+ (Good)	A.M. Best	6 of 13	Secure, last notch
Momentum Life	B (Fair)	A.M. Best	7 of 13	Vulnerable

All links retrieved 20 August 2026. The notch counts are our own arithmetic on the scale printed on Pinnacle Life's disclosure page. AIA, Asteron Life and Resolution Life are missing because a different agency, Fitch, grades them, and a Fitch letter does not mean the same as an AM Best letter. Mixing the two would build a false league table.

So Pinnacle's B+ is not the bottom of the ladder. It is the second lowest we could verify, and the lowest one still counted as secure.

Why does a healthy capital ratio not lift the rating?

Pinnacle's own figures show why. Every insurer here must hold a minimum amount of capital set by the regulator. Anything above that minimum is the spare cushion. Pinnacle's cushion is roughly one dollar for every eight the rules demand.

Pinnacle Life at 31 March 2026	Amount
Minimum capital the rules require	$67.931 million (Pinnacle Life, retrieved 20 August 2026)
Cushion held above that minimum	$8.352 million (Pinnacle Life, retrieved 20 August 2026)
Total capital held	$76.283 million (the two rows above, added)
Capital as a share of the minimum	112.3% (Pinnacle Life, retrieved 20 August 2026)

That cushion is what AM Best has in mind when it warns about "outsized new business growth, changes in the interest rate environment, and shock events".

Now look one notch down. Momentum Life reported capital of $9.8 million against a required $8.4 million at 30 June 2025, a ratio of 117% (Momentum Life, retrieved 20 August 2026). That is a higher percentage than Pinnacle's, from an insurer rated a notch lower. The reporting dates differ, but the point holds. A capital ratio is a snapshot of one day. A rating weighs size, spread of business and staying power over years. A percentage is not a rating.

The same lesson runs upward. AM Best said Pinnacle's capital was "at the strongest level" on its own stress test at the end of the 2025 financial year. It said the same of Fidelity Life in March (InsuranceNewsNet, 15 April 2026; Yahoo Finance, 6 March 2026, both retrieved 20 August 2026). Same capital grade, two notches apart. What separates them is everything around the capital. Fidelity's finances are called "very strong" where Pinnacle's are "adequate", and its business profile "neutral" where Pinnacle's is "limited".

Who actually insures you?

OneChoice advertises OneChoice. The chain behind the brand runs four names deep. OneChoice is the brand. Greenstone Financial Services NZ Limited sells the policies. Pinnacle Life Limited issues them and owes the claim. Greenstone Holdco Pty Limited owns Pinnacle (OneChoice, retrieved 20 August 2026; InsuranceNewsNet, 15 April 2026, retrieved 20 August 2026). The seller and the insurer share an owner. The brand you buy from and the company you depend on are two different businesses inside one group.

Where a rating might sit in the marketing, there is reinsurance instead. OneChoice's site says its cover is backed by Hannover Re, which it calls one of the world's leading underwriters (OneChoice, retrieved 20 August 2026). Momentum Life's site says it is "supported by Hannover Re, one of the world's largest reinsurance groups" (Momentum Life, retrieved 20 August 2026). Now read AM Best's line again. "High reliance on third-party reinsurance" is one of the reasons it flags Pinnacle's capital as sensitive. Your contract is with Pinnacle, not with Hannover Re. Leaning on another company's money is the thing the rater marks down.

What happens to my policy?

Nothing. If you hold a OneChoice policy, your insurer is Pinnacle Life, and that name is on your policy document. B+ (Good) with a stable outlook is a secure rating, not a distress signal. Nothing in the April release suggests claims are at risk, and AM Best expects Pinnacle's capital to stay at the strongest level on its stress test over the medium term (InsuranceNewsNet, 15 April 2026, retrieved 20 August 2026).

What the rating changes is how you shop. Cover bought straight from a brand is sold on price and convenience, and financial strength is one of the few things that genuinely differs between insurers. If two policies quote about the same and one insurer is rated two or three notches higher by the same agency, that is free information. Check any insurer's disclosed rating with our financial strength tool and line them up on compare insurers. If you are weighing brand-direct cover against the kind where an insurer asks health questions first, start with the life insurance basics. One rule holds throughout: only compare ratings from the same agency.

What we could not check

AM Best's own page for the 15 April 2026 release sent every request we made on 20 August 2026 to a bot-verification wall. So the release text quoted here comes from InsuranceNewsNet, which republished AM Best's press distribution. Every rating figure in it also appears, dated 15 April 2026, on Pinnacle Life's own disclosure page, which we did read directly.

Fidelity Life's website returned a 403 error, meaning access denied, every time. Its A- rests on AM Best's 6 March 2026 release as republished by Yahoo Finance, plus RiskinfoNZ's 23 March 2026 report. Partners Life's A (Excellent) is the weakest cell in the table. The 5 February 2026 AM Best release would not open anywhere we tried. What we could read is a January 2024 release at the same level via InsuranceNewsNet, and Insurance Business NZ's 2025 report. The 2026 release is titled an affirmation, meaning the rating was left unchanged, but we could not read the text.

AIA's website timed out every time, and Fitch grades it anyway, so it is not on the ladder. Co-operative Life is missing too. The most recent grade we know of is B++ from a September 2024 AM Best release, which is old, and we could not reach a current page today. The Reserve Bank's register of licensed insurers also returned a 403, so nothing here is cross-checked against the official register. One last thing: the April release says nothing about OneChoice, publishes no prices and compares no insurers. The ladder, the notch counts and the capital arithmetic are ours.

Sources

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