ACC claims statistics: volume barely moved, cost more than doubled
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ACC accepted 2,123,003 new claims in the 2025/26 financial year and paid out $6.91 billion excluding GST. Nine years earlier it took 1,944,346 claims and paid $3.11 billion.
So claim volume rose about 9 percent while the money went up 122 percent. That gap is the single most useful fact about ACC right now, and it is not the one the levy debate is usually argued on.
All figures below are from ACC General Claims Data, July 2026 update, published by ACC on data.govt.nz, retrieved 9 September 2026.
The two series, side by side
| Financial year | New claims | Active claim costs, excl GST | Cost per claim |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2016/17 | 1,944,346 | $3.11b | $1,601 |
| 2017/18 | 1,979,798 | $3.36b | $1,696 |
| 2018/19 | 2,025,232 | $3.69b | $1,824 |
| 2019/20 | 1,862,204 | $3.86b | $2,072 |
| 2020/21 | 2,100,011 | $4.34b | $2,065 |
| 2021/22 | 1,804,266 | $4.40b | $2,441 |
| 2022/23 | 1,967,666 | $5.16b | $2,621 |
| 2023/24 | 2,036,858 | $6.03b | $2,959 |
| 2024/25 | 2,098,171 | $6.82b | $3,252 |
| 2025/26 | 2,123,003 | $6.91b | $3,254 |
ACC General Claims Data, July 2026 update, retrieved 9 September 2026. Cost per claim is our arithmetic on ACC's two series and is explained below.
What that column does and does not mean
Cost per claim is a ratio of two ACC figures, not a figure ACC publishes, and it is worth being precise about what it is.
ACC counts a new claim by the financial year it was lodged, once, whatever happens to it afterwards. It counts active claim costs as payments made during a financial year, which may relate to claims lodged years earlier. So dividing one by the other does not give the lifetime cost of a claim lodged that year. It gives what ACC spent that year per claim it received that year, which is a useful indicator of pressure and a poor estimate of anything about an individual claim.
We publish it because it makes the divergence legible and because both inputs are ACC's own. Anyone wanting the underlying numbers rather than the ratio will find them in the two left-hand columns and in the CSV.
The shape of it, described
Plotted together on the same axis from 2016/17, the two lines start close and end far apart. Claim volume is almost flat: it wobbles between 1.8 and 2.1 million, dips visibly in 2019/20 and again in 2021/22, and finishes about where a growing population would put it. The cost line does something else entirely. It rises every single year without exception, gently to 2019/20 and then steeply, and by 2025/26 it is more than double where it started. The two dips in claim volume do not appear in the cost line at all.
What changed in the latest year
The most recent year is the first sign of a plateau in cost per claim, and only in that ratio.
- New claims rose again, from 2,098,171 to 2,123,003, the highest in the series.
- Active claim costs rose from $6.82b to $6.91b, an increase of about 1.3 percent, by far the smallest annual rise in the ten years shown.
- Cost per claim was essentially flat, $3,252 to $3,254.
One year is not a trend, and the two preceding years rose 17 and 13 percent respectively. Whether 2025/26 is a turning point or a pause is not answerable from this dataset.
Why this connects to what you pay
The ACC earners' levy went from $1.39 per $100 of liable earnings in 2021/22 to $1.75 in 2026/27, an increase of about 26 percent (Inland Revenue, ACC earners' levy rates, retrieved 9 September 2026). Over roughly the same window, ACC's active claim costs rose 57 percent.
That is the levy debate in two numbers, and it is not about New Zealanders claiming more often. You can work out your own levy exactly with the ACC levy calculator.
What is not in this dataset
ACC's general claims data counts claims and payments. It does not publish, in this release, how many claims were declined, which is the figure most people actually want when they ask about ACC claims statistics. Decline rates are reported elsewhere and inconsistently, and we are not going to estimate one from a dataset that does not contain it.
It also says nothing about illness. Every claim here is a personal injury, because that is ACC's entire remit. Cancer, heart disease and the other conditions that stop most people working are outside it, which is the gap this site exists to explain rather than a shortcoming of the data. See what ACC does not cover.
Questions
How many ACC claims are there each year in New Zealand?
2,123,003 new claims were lodged in the 2025/26 financial year, the highest in the ten years ACC publishes in this dataset. The number has moved within a fairly narrow band, between about 1.8 and 2.1 million, for a decade.
Is ACC getting more expensive because people claim more?
No, on ACC's own numbers. Claim volume rose about 9 percent across nine years, roughly tracking population. Active claim costs rose 122 percent over the same period. The pressure is in what each claim costs, not in how many arrive.
What is the difference between a new claim and an active claim?
ACC counts a new claim once, in the year it was lodged, whatever the outcome. An active claim is counted each time a claim receives a payment, so a claim lodged in 2019 that is still being paid in 2026 is active in both years. Mixing the two is the most common error in reporting ACC data.
Does this include declined claims?
New claims are counted at lodgement, so the count includes claims that were later declined. What the dataset does not give is how many were declined, which is why this page does not quote a decline rate.
Does ACC cover illness?
No. ACC covers personal injury. Illness is outside it entirely, which is why income protection and trauma cover exist alongside it rather than duplicating it.
Cite this page
QuoteHub, "ACC claims statistics: volume barely moved, cost more than doubled", quotehub.co.nz/statistics/acc-claims-statistics-nz, 9 September 2026. Underlying data: ACC General Claims Data, July 2026 update, published on data.govt.nz. The table is available as a CSV: acc-claims-2026-09.csv.
Restated annually, or on ACC's next general claims release.
Adviser's view
QuoteHub built this page because the levy debate is usually argued as though New Zealanders are claiming more, and ACC's own data says they are barely claiming more at all. Claim volume grew nine percent across nine years, roughly in line with population. Cost grew a hundred and twenty-two percent. Whatever is driving levies up, it is what each claim costs rather than how many there are, and that distinction changes which arguments about ACC are worth having.
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Cite this page QuoteHub NZ (2026). ACC Claims Statistics NZ: Cost Per Claim, September 2026. www.quotehub.co.nz/statistics/acc-claims-statistics-nz. Updated 2026-09-09.
Explore related pages: Life Insurance, Income Protection, Health Insurance, Trauma Insurance, How Were Paid.