Chubb Life: what to compare

Chubb Life is a licensed life insurer operating in New Zealand, offering the core personal risk range: life cover, trauma or critical illness cover, total and permanent disability cover and income protection. Two facts about it matter more than most for consumers trying to compare the market.

The first is that Cigna’s New Zealand life business became Chubb Life. If you took out a policy under the Cigna name, the insurer administering it is now Chubb Life. Your policy wording did not change because the brand did. The terms you were issued are the terms that apply, and a rebranding does not entitle an insurer to reduce a benefit or reinterpret a definition.

The second is that Southern Cross Life & Living Insurance is underwritten by Chubb Life. Southern Cross is a familiar New Zealand health brand, and the life and living cover sold under it sits on Chubb Life paper. That is not a criticism of either company — it is a common and perfectly ordinary arrangement — but it does mean that if you put Southern Cross Life and Chubb Life on the same shortlist you are comparing two brands backed by one underwriter, not two independent options.

Brand transitions happen across the market, and they generate more anxiety than they usually deserve. Here is the practical checklist.

1. 1Find your original policy schedule and wording. That document, not the new letterhead, is your contract.
2. 2Check the sum insured, the premium structure, the expiry age and any exclusions or loadings recorded on the schedule. They should be unchanged.
3. 3Check which dispute resolution scheme the current insurer belongs to. Every licensed insurer must belong to one — IFSO, FSCL, FDRS or the Banking Ombudsman — and that is the scheme you would use.
4. 4Do not cancel and re-apply simply because the brand changed. Re-applying means being underwritten at your current age and current health, and anything diagnosed since your original application can be loaded or excluded.
5. 5If you cannot find your wording, ask the insurer for a copy in writing. You are entitled to it.

The dimensions to compare, here as everywhere

• Premium structure: level availability, expiry ages, and what happens when a level period ends.
• Terminal illness: 12 months’ or 24 months’ certified life expectancy.
• Trauma: definitions for the conditions that drive most claims, severity-based partial payments, and buy-back availability.
• TPD: own-occupation availability by occupation class, and the age at which the definition converts.
• Income protection: agreed value availability, waiting and benefit periods, ACC offsets and any booster benefit.
• Future insurability: triggers, per-event caps and the age at which the benefit ends.
• Pass-back: whether later wording improvements apply to policies already in force.
• Evidence limits, policy fee structure and multi-benefit discounts.

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

• Whether two brands on your shortlist are backed by the same underwriter, which quietly removes the diversification you thought you had.
• That an older policy may have better terms than a current one — legacy wordings are sometimes more generous, so check before replacing.
• Whether any exclusion or loading on your existing policy is still appropriate, since some are time-limited or reviewable.
• Whether your existing policy has pass-back, which may mean later wording improvements already apply to you.
• Which entity is named on the renewal notice, and whether that matches the entity named on your original schedule.

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 read your existing wording against a current one and tell you whether replacing it gains or loses you ground — often it loses.
• Where two brands share an underwriter, an adviser knows and will not present them as independent alternatives.
• An adviser can request a review of a historic exclusion where the underlying condition has been stable for years.
• Pre-assessment across several insurers protects your record if you are considering moving.
• At claim time, an adviser deals with whichever entity now administers the policy, which matters when a brand has changed and the family has not kept the paperwork.

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.