Insurance for forestry workers

Forestry work concentrates the risks insurers price most heavily: chainsaws, falling timber, steep and unstable terrain, heavy machinery, wire ropes under tension, remoteness from medical help, and weather. New Zealand’s forestry sector has spent years working on its safety record, and mechanisation has changed the picture, but the occupation remains at the heavy end of every insurer’s table.

That has a real consequence: income protection for forestry workers is restricted, expensive where it exists, and unavailable from several insurers. TPD, where offered, will generally be on an any-occupation definition. This is not a negotiating position; it is the market.

What is available is often overlooked. Life cover for a forestry worker can usually be arranged, and trauma cover generally can too — because those products are priced mainly off health rather than off how far a tree can fall. For a forestry contractor with a family and a mortgage, that is the cover that matters most and it is regularly never discussed.

The other detail worth knowing is that not all forestry work is rated the same. A machine operator in a cab running a harvester is a different proposition from a breaker-out on a steep face, and insurers who write the sector at all do distinguish between them. Describe the actual role.

The instinct when an insurer declines is to stop. The better response is to buy the protection that is available and size it deliberately.

These are the details that decide whether the cover does what you expected. Read them before you compare on price.

• Whether your specific role — faller, breaker-out, machine operator, log truck driver, silviculture — has been described rather than coded generically.
• Whether any income protection offered is accident-only, which largely duplicates ACC.
• The benefit period, which is commonly capped at two years for this class.
• Hearing. Noise-induced hearing loss is a recognised occupational disease but acceptance is case by case, and it will be asked about.
• Whether cover continues if you move between contracting crews or work seasonally.
• Your ACC CoverPlus Extra level, and whether it still matches your actual earnings.

Every New Zealand insurer writes cover for forestry work to its own wording, and the words are where the money is. Two policies that look identical on price can pay very differently when it matters. Closing that gap is the entire job of an adviser.

• Very few insurers write forestry income protection, and which ones do changes. An adviser knows the current position; a comparison website does not.
• Mechanised roles are rated better than manual roles by some insurers. That distinction has to be made in the application.
• Where income protection is unavailable, an adviser can construct trauma, TPD and mortgage cover to carry much of the same load.
• Coordinating the ACC CoverPlus Extra level with private cover avoids paying twice for accident risk while leaving illness uninsured.

There are three ways to buy life cover in New Zealand, and they are not equivalent. You can buy direct from one insurer, which means you see one product range and one underwriting appetite. You can buy through your bank, which usually means a single insurer’s product sold under the bank’s brand, often with narrower definitions. Or you can go through an adviser, who quotes several insurers at once and is required to put your interests first.

The premium you pay is the same either way. Insurers build adviser commission into their pricing whether or not an adviser is involved, so going direct does not get you a discount — it just removes the person whose job is to argue your corner at application and at claim time.

• An adviser can see which insurer is currently taking your health history on standard terms, and which one will load or exclude it.
• An adviser can structure cover across two insurers if that produces a better outcome than putting everything with one.
• An adviser handles the underwriting back-and-forth, and is the person who chases the claim when a family is least able to.
• An adviser has to document why the recommendation suits you, which is a written record you can hold them to.

We are a referral service, not an insurer. We do not quote premiums and we do not sell policies. What we do is put you in front of one licensed New Zealand adviser who can compare the market properly.

1. 1

   You tell us what you are looking at

   The form takes about a minute. Nobody asks for your medical history on a web form — that conversation happens with the adviser, properly, and only once you have decided to proceed.

2. 2

   An adviser calls you

   A licensed New Zealand adviser talks through your situation: who depends on you, what you owe, what you already have in place, and what you are actually worried about.

3. 3

   They compare the market

   The adviser quotes across the major insurers, checks which of them will take your health history on the best terms, and puts the options side by side in writing.

4. 4

   You decide, in your own time

   There is no obligation and no cost to you. If the answer is that you already have enough cover, a good adviser will tell you that.