The duty of disclosure

When you apply for life, trauma, TPD or income protection cover in New Zealand, you enter a contract of utmost good faith. That old phrase has a very practical meaning: because the insurer cannot investigate you the way a bank investigates a borrower, the law places the burden on you to tell it everything that matters, whether or not it thought to ask.

This is the reverse of how most consumer contracts work, and it catches people out. The application form is not the boundary of your obligation. If you know something a prudent underwriter would want to know, and the form did not quite ask about it, you are still expected to say it.

The test is not whether you thought it was important. It is whether a reasonable underwriter, assessing this risk, would have wanted it in front of them. That is an objective test applied after the fact, usually by someone reading your medical records with the benefit of hindsight.

There is no closed list, but in practice these are the categories that come up again and again when a claim is examined and something is found missing.

• Any diagnosis, even one you consider resolved or minor, and even one made years ago.
• Symptoms you have had investigated — the referral, the scan, the specialist appointment — regardless of whether anything was found.
• Symptoms you have not yet had investigated. An undiagnosed lump or a persistent pain you have been meaning to see someone about is disclosable.
• Medication, past and present, including anything prescribed short-term and anything you stopped taking.
• Counselling, therapy or any mental health support, whether or not a formal diagnosis was made.
• Your actual alcohol intake and your actual nicotine or vaping use, on the insurer’s stated definition.
• Family history of heritable conditions in parents and siblings, within the ages the insurer specifies.
• Occupation changes, income changes, and any hazardous pastime you take part in.
• Any previous application that was declined, loaded, postponed or accepted with an exclusion.

The duty does not stop when you sign

This is the part almost nobody knows. Your obligation runs until the insurer issues the policy. If you are diagnosed with something, referred for a test, or start a new medication in the six weeks between submitting the application and the policy being issued, you must tell the insurer. The same applies if you take up a new sport, change jobs, or book a trip somewhere the insurer asks about.

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

• Answering only what the form literally asks. The duty is broader than the questionnaire.
• Assuming the insurer will see it in your GP notes anyway. It may not order notes at all, and the omission still counts.
• Letting an adviser summarise your history for you without reading what was written down.
• Treating counselling, physiotherapy or a one-off investigation as not worth mentioning.
• Not updating the insurer about something that happened after you signed but before the policy was issued.

Every New Zealand insurer writes applications and disclosure 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’s job at application is to draw the history out of you properly — the questions behind the questions — so nothing material is missed.
• Where a condition is arguable, an adviser can present it with the right supporting evidence rather than leaving an underwriter to imagine the worst.
• If something changes during underwriting, the adviser handles the update to the insurer so the disclosure is properly recorded.
• At claim time, the adviser is the person who can produce the original application and show that the fact was disclosed.

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.