Insurance for miners and quarry workers

Insurers approach extractive industries by asking two questions before anything else: are you underground, and do you handle explosives. Underground work concentrates the risks that produce catastrophic and long-duration claims — confined space, ground instability, ventilation, gas, and difficult evacuation. Open cast mining and quarry work carry heavy plant and blasting risk but not the confinement, and are generally rated less severely.

That distinction has real consequences. Several New Zealand insurers will not write income protection for underground mining at all, and those that do impose restrictions: capped benefit periods, longer waiting periods, higher premiums, or accident-only terms. Quarry and surface work is more readily written, though still in a heavy band.

The health risks divide the same way the ACC boundary does. Acute injury — plant, falls, ground failure, vehicle incidents — is accident, and ACC covers it. Dust-related respiratory disease and noise-induced hearing loss can be accepted as work-related conditions, but each claim is assessed on its evidence, and establishing exposure over a career is not always simple. Cardiovascular disease, cancer and degenerative musculoskeletal damage sit outside the scheme entirely.

The frustration for people in the sector is that incomes are frequently good and the cover that would protect them is the hardest to get. The answer is not to give up on insurance. It is to buy the products that are available and size them to do the job.

The same logic that applies to forestry and roofing applies here, and it is worth setting out concretely.

1. 1Establish exactly what your role is — underground, open cast, quarry, plant operation, surface processing, surveying or supervision — because the answers differ by role, not by industry.
2. 2Test income protection across the market anyway. Appetite varies, and one decline is not the answer.
3. 3Where it is unavailable or capped, size trauma cover against two to three years of income instead.
4. 4Add TPD sized to clear the mortgage, understanding that the definition will usually be any occupation.
5. 5Take life cover, which is generally available and is the cheapest large sum insured on the market.

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

• Whether you are rated on underground or surface work, and whether the application says so clearly.
• Whether explosives handling and confined space entry have been disclosed.
• Any benefit period cap or accident-only restriction in an income protection offer.
• Respiratory and hearing history, both of which will be asked about.
• Whether the site is remote or fly-in, which some insurers treat as an additional factor.
• Whether an employer scheme provides cover, and whether it ends when you leave the site.

Every New Zealand insurer writes cover for mining and quarry 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 underground mining income protection, and which ones do changes. That knowledge is the value an adviser adds here.
• Surface and plant roles can often be distinguished from underground work in a way that materially improves terms.
• Where disability cover is restricted, trauma and life cover can be sized deliberately to carry the load.
• Large mortgages taken against a high mining income need sizing against the cover that is actually obtainable.

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.