Premiums news
Premium stories cover what moves the price of cover in New Zealand: tax treatment, commission structures, repricing rounds and the policy settings that shift cost. QuoteHub publishes no premium quotes, pricing depends on underwriting, so these stories work from published documents: regulator reports, industry modelling and insurers’ own disclosures, each linked where it is used.
New Zealand premiums news from QuoteHub, with the source document behind every story. 7 stories.
- Southern Cross Has Published No 2026 Premium Increase. It Has Published Everything Around One, Premiums, 2026-09-08. There is no announced Southern Cross premium rise for 2026, because no New Zealand health insurer announces one. What the Society does publish is the machinery behind your renewal: age-rating to 75, your age band's claims experience, and two years of reserves spent holding increases down. Source: Southern Cross Medical Care Society Group, Annual Report Summary 2025.
- Health cover rose 19.2 percent in a year. Three more like it would add 69 percent, Premiums, 2026-08-18. Health insurance rose 19.2 percent in the year to June 2026 while pay rose 2.0 percent, on Stats NZ figures. Three more years at that pace would add about 69 percent, and 80,770 people have already dropped hospital and specialist cover. Source: Stats NZ, Consumers price index: June 2026 quarter.
- Workplace health cover is taxed at 49.25%. If that tax goes, the money is your employer's, not yours, Premiums, 2026-08-12. Insurers want Fringe Benefit Tax taken off employer-paid cover, and have modelled $198 million of national benefit. On most workplace schemes the tax is 49.25 cents in every premium dollar, the same for a cleaner as for a chief executive. Nothing in the proposal sends any of it to you. Source: FSC, Why removing FBT on workplace insurance stacks up.
- UniMed now charges $150 a scope or scan, and will not say how far premiums rose, Premiums, 2026-08-01. From 1 August 2026 roughly 140,000 members pay the first $150 of each colonoscopy or gastroscopy themselves, and on one plan the first $150 of every CT, MRI and PET scan. Those tests were covered in full in July. The premium rise that arrived with them has no published number. Source: UniMed, Premium and Health Plan changes.
- Two rises in 91 days: Partners Life's older health cover is up 18.9%, its newer plan 3.9%, Premiums, 2026-06-17. The two rounds multiply out to 18.9% on Protection Plan private medical cover, and holders meet the lot in one anniversary letter with the rise for being a year older on top. Last year a round announced as 2% reached existing clients as 20%. Source: Partners Life, Private Medical Cover Premium Changes.
- Life premiums rose 2.7%. Per policy, the rise was bigger., Premiums, 2026-06-08. Insurers took $3.31 billion across 4 million policies, and policy numbers fell. A bigger pot shared between fewer covers means the increase carried by each one is larger than the 2.7% headline, on an average cover of $827.50 a year. Source: Financial Services Council.
- The fund behind your home insurance levy holds $622.6 million, and the first $2.1 billion of a big quake is its problem alone, Premiums, 2026-01-28. Cabinet froze the natural hazards levy at 16 cents against Treasury advice of 24. That keeps up to $274 a year on a capped home. It also leaves about $464 million a year uncollected by a fund that is already $1.48 billion short of the point where its outside cover starts, and if that fund falls short, levy payers or taxpayers make up the difference. Source: The Treasury, Cabinet paper ECO-26-SUB-0003: Insurance affordability and the review of Natural Hazards Insurance Act financial settings and levy settings.
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, For Brokers.