AIA: what to compare

AIA is a licensed life insurer operating in New Zealand with the full personal risk range: life cover, trauma or critical illness cover, total and permanent disability cover, income protection and health insurance. It reaches customers both through advisers and, for simpler products, through more direct channels.

That second point creates the most common confusion when people compare it. Quashed’s Market Scan data, for example, lists an AIA “Starter” tier alongside other insurers’ standard products. A starter or entry product typically buys a narrower set of benefits, with simpler underwriting and often lower maximum sums insured. Comparing an entry product’s price against another insurer’s full product and concluding that one insurer is dearer is a category error, and it is a very easy one to make from a price table.

So the first question to settle with any insurer that sells at more than one tier is which tier you are actually being quoted, and what the cheaper tier does not include.

Do this in two passes. First establish what you are buying. Then compare it against the equivalent thing elsewhere.

1. 1Identify the product tier in the quote. Ask directly: is this the full product or an entry-level version, and what benefits are absent from the cheaper one?
2. 2Check the maximum sums insured available at that tier, and whether they are enough for what you are insuring.
3. 3Check the underwriting route. Simplified underwriting is faster, but simplified products often carry broader pre-existing condition exclusions in exchange.
4. 4Only then compare against other insurers, matching sum insured, waiting period, benefit period, premium structure and indexation setting exactly.

The dimensions that decide the outcome

• Premium structure: whether level is available, to which expiry ages, and what happens at expiry — some policies end, others convert to stepped at attained age.
• Terminal illness: whether the trigger is a certified life expectancy under 12 months or under 24 months.
• Trauma: how cancer, heart attack and stroke are defined, whether severity-based partial payments exist for early-stage diagnoses, and whether a buy-back is available.
• TPD: whether own-occupation is offered for your occupation class, and at what age the definition converts to any-occupation or an activities-of-daily-living test.
• Income protection: agreed value availability, the waiting and benefit periods offered, how ACC is offset, and whether a booster or top-up benefit exists.
• Future insurability: which life events trigger an increase without medical evidence, and the dollar limits per event and in total.
• Pass-back: whether later wording improvements apply to policies already in force.
• Evidence limits: the sum insured you can apply for at your age before blood tests, a medical examination or financial evidence are required.

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

• Which product tier the quote is for, and what the cheaper tier does not cover.
• Whether the trauma cover quoted is accelerated — reducing life cover when it pays — or standalone.
• The occupation class assigned to you, which drives income protection and TPD availability more than it drives life cover pricing.
• Whether any multi-policy discount you are being offered is conditional on keeping both policies, and what happens to the price if you cancel one.
• Whether indexation is on by default, since CPI increases lift both the cover and the premium each year unless declined.

Every New Zealand insurer writes new zealand life insurers 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.

• An adviser can tell you whether the tier you have been quoted is the one that suits, or whether the full product at a slightly higher price closes a gap that matters.
• Where a simplified product would exclude a pre-existing condition, an adviser can test whether a fully underwritten application elsewhere would cover it outright.
• Occupation class definitions differ between insurers; an adviser knows which insurer classes your job most favourably.
• An adviser models the household total including policy fees and discounts, not the per-benefit rate.
• At claim time, someone who understands the definition wording is the difference between a straightforward claim and a contested one.

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.