Life insurance for temporary visa holders

Insurers write long contracts. A life policy is intended to run for decades, and an underwriter assessing an applicant on a two-year visa is being asked to price a lifetime risk for someone who may not be here in eighteen months. That is the real reason eligibility rules exist — not the visa itself, but the uncertainty about where you will live, be treated, and eventually claim.

The practical consequence is a patchwork. One insurer will decline an applicant on an accredited employer work visa outright. Another will accept the same person, perhaps requiring that they have already been in New Zealand for a period, or that they intend to apply for residence. A third will offer life cover but not income protection, on the grounds that a disability claim needs ongoing local assessment.

Group cover through an employer is the useful exception. Because it is underwritten on a scheme basis rather than individually, employer schemes frequently cover all employees including visa holders, often without health questions up to a set level. It ends when the job ends, which for a visa holder can mean it ends the day the employment does.

1. 1Find out exactly what your employer’s scheme covers, the sum insured, and whether it can be continued personally if you leave.
2. 2Ask an adviser which insurers currently accept your visa category, rather than applying blind and collecting declines.
3. 3Apply as soon as you are eligible, since time in New Zealand generally helps and age never does.
4. 4Disclose your full overseas medical history, and start requesting records early if you have any history worth documenting.
5. 5Keep any cover you hold in your home country until New Zealand cover is issued and in force.
6. 6Review the whole picture when your visa status changes — residence usually opens doors that were closed.

If you leave New Zealand

Where cover has been issued on the basis of your residence here, leaving can affect it. Some policies continue on a worldwide basis; others limit benefits, particularly income protection, once you live abroad. This should be clarified in writing at application, because it is the term most likely to matter to someone on a temporary visa and the one least likely to be mentioned in a sales conversation.

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

• The insurer’s stated residency requirement, and whether it applies at application only or throughout the policy.
• Whether an income protection benefit would still be paid if you returned home while disabled, and for how long.
• Whether employer group cover has a continuation option letting you convert to a personal policy without underwriting.
• Whether your ACC earner classification matches the work you actually do here.
• Whether health insurance, which has its own eligibility rules, is being confused with life cover in an employer package.
• Whether an application is being made to an insurer with no appetite, which produces an avoidable decline on your record.

Every New Zealand insurer writes cover for temporary visa holders 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.

• Knowing which insurers currently accept which visa categories — this changes and is not published in a comparable form.
• Avoiding unnecessary declines, which follow you onto every future application.
• Assessing whether employer cover is enough for now and what should be added personally.
• Revisiting eligibility when your visa status changes, which is a review most people never think to request.

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.