Partners Life: what to compare

Partners Life is a licensed New Zealand life insurer offering the full personal risk suite — life cover, trauma or critical illness cover, total and permanent disability cover, income protection and health insurance — along with cover structured for business owners. It reaches customers through Registered Financial Service Providers rather than selling direct to the public.

That distribution model has a practical consequence for you. You cannot compare it by filling in a web form; you see it through an adviser, alongside whatever else that adviser has on their panel. So the quality of the comparison you get is partly a function of how many insurers your adviser actually deals with. It is a fair question to ask before you start.

What follows is deliberately not a verdict. Product features, rates and underwriting appetite move frequently, and any page that told you this insurer beats another one would be out of date within months and wrong for half the people reading it in the meantime.

These are the dimensions on which New Zealand wordings genuinely diverge. Ask them of this insurer and of every other insurer on your shortlist, and write the answers down side by side.

Two deserve emphasis. Income protection offsets: an insurer that pays a generous headline benefit then offsets ACC dollar for dollar produces a different claim outcome from one offering a top-up. And future insurability, the benefit that protects you against your own future health.

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

• Whether the quote you have been shown is for agreed value or indemnity income protection — the price gap between them is large and the claim outcome is very different.
• Whether indexation is switched on by default. CPI increases lift both the sum insured and the premium unless you decline them.
• Whether trauma cover is standalone or accelerated. Accelerated trauma reduces your life cover when it pays; standalone does not, and costs more.
• The occupation class you have been assigned, and what it does to your income protection and TPD terms. Class definitions are not standard between insurers.
• Whether a loading or exclusion on your terms is worth re-testing elsewhere, because reinsurance treaties differ.

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 pre-assess a complicated medical history with several insurers before any formal application exists, so an unfavourable answer never lands on your record.
• Where an insurer applies a loading or an exclusion, an adviser can put the same history to another insurer whose reinsurer takes a different view.
• Structuring cover across two insurers is sometimes better than putting everything with one, and only someone quoting the whole panel can see that.
• Policy fee structure and multi-benefit discounts mean the cheapest per-benefit rate is often not the cheapest household total.
• An adviser must document why a recommendation suits you — a written record you can hold them to later.

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.