Pinnacle Life: what to compare

Pinnacle Life is a licensed New Zealand life insurer that sells direct to the public, primarily online, without an adviser in the middle. You answer the questions, you get a price, you are covered. For someone in good health with a simple situation and a clear idea of the sum insured they want, that is a genuinely efficient way to get insured — and being insured beats being perfectly structured but uninsured.

What you are trading is the work that an adviser would otherwise do. Nobody is quoting eight insurers on matched terms. Nobody is pre-assessing your history anonymously with several underwriters to find the one that will not load it. Nobody is reading the offset clause on your income protection or telling you your sum insured is too low. And at claim time, nobody is assembling the evidence for you.

That trade is reasonable for some households and a bad deal for others. The dividing line is usually health complexity and cover complexity: if either is non-trivial, the value of the panel goes up sharply.

Direct insurers are frequently assumed to be cheaper because there is no adviser. The published data does not support that as a rule.

The lesson is not that one source is wrong. It is that a three-insurer panel and a nine-insurer panel answer different questions, and that a ranking depends entirely on who is in it. If you are using a published comparison to decide, check how many insurers it covers and whether the profile resembles you.

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

• Whether level premiums are available and to which expiry age, since stepped-only cover gets expensive at exactly the age you are most likely to need it.
• Whether the online application is fully underwritten or simplified, and whether a general pre-existing exclusion applies.
• The maximum sum insured available online, and whether it covers your mortgage plus income replacement.
• Whether trauma, TPD and income protection are available and on what definitions — direct ranges are often narrower.
• Whether a future insurability or special events benefit lets you increase cover after a life event without new medical evidence.
• That answering an online health question casually still engages your duty of disclosure. A careless answer can void a claim.

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 quotes the whole panel, which a single direct insurer by definition cannot do.
• For any non-trivial health history, an adviser can pre-assess anonymously across insurers before a formal application exists.
• Direct products are often narrower on income protection and TPD, which are the covers a working household usually needs most.
• An adviser checks that the sum insured is right, which online calculators rarely do well.
• At claim, an adviser assembles the evidence — the part of the service that is invisible until you need it.

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.