New Zealand's commercial insurance market is handing brokers more choice than it has in years - broader wordings, higher limits, softer rates - but there is still no fully digitised and consistent way to show a client how one insurer's offer stacks up against another's.
For Jatinder Singh (pictured), commercial account manager at global broker Aon in New Zealand, that gap is likely the single biggest drag on his working day. Speaking to Insurance Business at the New Zealand Underwriting Agencies Council (NZUAC) Auckland Expo this week, he was direct about what he would fix first.
"One thing for sure: we don't have any comparison documentation of each insurer," Singh said.
Where a standard wording applies, brokers lean on years of familiarity with the policy language. Where it does not, the comparison has to be built by hand - risk by risk, insurer by insurer - before a summary reaches the client. In other markets, Singh noted, a client can enter their details online and see competing quotes side by side. Compiled documentation for each company and each risk, he argued, would give New Zealand clients enough information to make an informed decision about which insurer was better.
In a market actively competing for broker business, the inability to demonstrate that competition efficiently to clients is a direct constraint on the value brokers can show.
The manual comparison burden has a structural cause. Two Australian-owned groups write the bulk of New Zealand's general insurance. IAG New Zealand, which trades as State, AMI and NZI, reported gross written premium of NZ$4.06 billion for the year to June 30 2026, down 2.7% in local currency, with the insurer pointing at a softer commercial insurance market. Suncorp New Zealand, home to Vero and the AA Insurance joint venture, reported gross written premium down 4.8% to NZ$2.756 billion on a soft commercial cycle and the exit of an intermediated consumer book.
Between them that is close to NZ$6.8 billion of premium, and both books went backwards in commercial lines in the same year. The Commerce Commission blocked Vero's bid for Tower in 2017 on competition grounds, and the shape of the market has not fundamentally changed since - a backdrop that helps explain how underwriting agencies are increasing their presence in a concentrated insurance market.
Singh's argument is that the scarcity of underwriters is itself the problem - and that more competition would force a lift across the board.
"If we have more insurers in the market, every insurer has to pick up their game and provide better terms, rates, conditions, and work better with the insurance brokers," he said.
The economy is not helping. Unemployment reached 5.6% in the June 2026 quarter, the highest in more than a decade, with underutilisation jumping to 13.8%. The Reserve Bank of New Zealand lifted the Official Cash Rate to 2.50% in July 2026, having noted that rising costs are squeezing profit margins and curbing investment and hiring intentions among New Zealand firms - pressures that feed directly into the commercial risks brokers are placing.
The irony is that conditions have rarely been better for buyers. Aon's own Q1 2026 Global Insurance Market Insights put New Zealand pricing down between 1% and 10%, with capacity abundant, underwriting flexible, limits increasing and coverages broader across property, casualty, cyber and financial lines.
More choice means more to compare - and more ground for brokers to cover manually. Singh singled out cyber, where the spread of terms and cover types makes it harder to tell a client which policy genuinely serves them. Property, liability, financial lines and motor present the same problem in different forms. In motor, he said, many insurers will only write a complete programme rather than a single risk, adding another layer of complexity to what a broker needs to explain. It is the same tension NZUAC has been pressing at its 2026 expos, where the message to brokers has been that chasing price alone is the real risk in a softening market.
Technology is the obvious answer and Singh's team is already testing it. But he was careful about how far it can be trusted, noting any AI-generated comparison would need sign-off from the insurer before it went to a client.
"We can't 100% rely on AI, so we try our best to do as much as we can, but sometimes you've got to take the manual road as well," he said.
That caution is well-founded - an AI-generated summary that misrepresents a policy wording creates liability the broker carries, not the tool. Until insurer-validated digital comparison becomes available, the manual process remains the only defensible one.
For now, brokers in New Zealand occupy an uncomfortable position: a market actively competing for their business, soft conditions that should make client conversations easier, and a largely manual process that makes it harder to prove which competitor actually won. The brokers who navigate that gap most effectively - building clear, client-facing comparisons despite the friction - are the ones best placed to retain clients when the market eventually turns.
