Insurance in New Zealand
Work out what you
actually need.
Plain-English guides, real New Zealand numbers, and three free calculators — with no email gate and nothing sold on this page. When you want a real answer about your own cover, we introduce you to Arron.
Photo: Casey Horner
Start here
ACC covers accidents.
It does not cover illness.
Fall off a ladder and ACC pays you up to 80% of your income. Get diagnosed with cancer, a heart condition, MS, or back pain that built up over years — and ACC pays nothing at all.
Almost every insurance product sold in this country exists because of that one sentence. Most New Zealanders have never seen it written down.
The six covers
Named after the product, not the problem
Insurance names explain almost nothing. Here is each one described by the question it answers instead.
Life insurance
If my income stopped permanently, would the people who depend on it be okay?
Income protection
How long could I actually go without a pay cheque?
Trauma cover
If I were diagnosed tomorrow, what would I need cash for right now?
Health insurance
If I needed a hip, a scan or a specialist, could I afford to wait?
Mortgage protection
If I could not work, would we keep the house?
Business & key person
If the person this business runs on stopped, what would it cost?
Nobody needs all six. Most people need two or three, sized properly.
Free tools
Three calculators. No email gate.
Most insurance calculators online are lead-capture forms wearing a calculator costume. These run in your browser, show the answer immediately, and send nothing anywhere.
How much life cover do I need?
Builds a figure from your mortgage, dependants and existing cover instead of guessing at a round number.
How long could you last?
Turns your leave, savings and outgoings into a runway in weeks — which is also how you pick a wait period.
The ACC gap checker
The same six months off work as an accident and as an illness, side by side, in your dollars.
The numbers
What cover actually costs here
Every insurance site says "it depends". It does — but the ranges are knowable, and knowing them is what stops you overpaying by a third.
Where you are right now
The moments this actually changes
You just bought your first home
A mortgage converts a flexible cost into a rigid one. That is the whole argument.
You just had a baby
The largest single jump in insurance need, arriving when you have the least capacity to think about it.
You work for yourself
No sick leave, no employer scheme, and an ACC entitlement based on your last tax return.
Questions people actually ask
The ones that get searched at 11pm
Who you would actually talk to
Arron Nettmann
Financial Adviser at Buffer Insurance in Auckland, working with people across all of New Zealand.
Everything on this site is general information — it deliberately stops short of telling you what to do, because that is regulated financial advice and it requires a licence. Arron has one. He compares cover across New Zealand's insurers, knows which of them underwrite which health conditions favourably, and there is no charge to talk to him.
We may benefit from that introduction. Here is exactly how, and why this site exists — we would rather say it plainly than bury it.
Start with the number, not the product
Five minutes with a calculator beats an hour with a brochure. You will know what you are aiming at, and you will be much harder to sell something you do not need.