{"id":579133,"date":"2026-08-24T20:18:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-24T20:18:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/579133\/"},"modified":"2026-08-24T20:18:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-24T20:18:09","slug":"insurance-premiums-fall-but-gap-between-cheapest-and-most-expensive-quotes-widens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/579133\/","title":{"rendered":"Insurance premiums fall but gap between cheapest and most expensive quotes widens"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tower Insurance announced a change of approach<\/a> last year that saw 90% of customers paying less (an average decrease of $70 a year) and 10% of customers pay more (a median increase of $230 a year).<\/p>\n

While Consumer NZ has credited Tower with giving customers breakdowns of how risks affected their premiums, it has criticised other insurers<\/a> for not being transparent about the data underpinning their pricing.<\/p>\n

The Insurance Council said at the time<\/a> that premiums were based on a range of risk factors and it cost more to protect some properties \u201con flood plains or near major rivers\u201d or \u201cin regions with higher seismic activity\u201d.<\/p>\n

Quashed data showed average home and contents insurance quotes have fallen in the past year, particularly in Wellington and Canterbury.<\/p>\n

However, Lim said there was also more variation in what different insurers were quoting for the same property.<\/p>\n

The average gap between the highest and lowest quotes for the same property or vehicle had increased to $1401 for house insurance, $599 for contents insurance and $651 for car insurance.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur key takeaway would be for consumers to shop your policies a lot more. A lot of consumers could potentially be paying a lot more than they have to when they\u2019re rolling over their policies without shopping around.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite the recent fall in some premiums, the average household is still spending more of its income on insurance<\/a> than five years ago, due in part to a historic spike in premiums<\/a> after the 2023 severe weather events.<\/p>\n

Average home insurance premiums have increased 58.5% over that period, average contents premiums have increased 52.6%, and average vehicle insurance has risen 39.6%.<\/p>\n

Total insurance prices have increased by more than a third (33.9%) in the past five years, almost twice as fast as incomes (17.3%) and faster than overall consumer prices (25.6%).<\/p>\n

Michael Sergel is Newstalk ZB\u2019s business reporter. He\u2019s been covering business, politics, local government and consumer affairs for more than a decade.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tower Insurance announced a change of approach last year that saw 90% of customers paying less (an average…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":579134,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[2851,95,5432,138,3013,6434,129570,14739,3592,9872,38114,8455,305,29012,17053,5829,3025,111,139,69,24748,4961,7812,165,36298,71895],"class_list":["post-579133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-also","tag-and","tag-between","tag-business","tag-but","tag-cheaper","tag-cheapest","tag-expensive","tag-fall","tag-finally","tag-gap","tag-getting","tag-have","tag-households","tag-insurance","tag-many","tag-most","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-premiums","tag-quotes","tag-seen","tag-their","tag-widens","tag-wider"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/579133","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=579133"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/579133\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/579134"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=579133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=579133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=579133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}