New Zealand’s accident compensation scheme absorbed more than two million injury claims in 2025, with road injuries costing the fund nearly 10 times more per claim than sports injuries despite representing less than 2% of total claim volume. The cost concentration – alongside rising gym injury rates and persistent home-based harm – maps where the scheme’s financial exposure is heaviest, even as ACC reported one month of zero growth in its long-term claims pool in April 2026, a result the corporation connected to focused rehabilitation effort rather than a sustained trend.
The Accident Compensation Corporation’s (ACC) Injuries in New Zealand report, published June 17, 2026, draws on 2025 claims data to examine injury patterns across four environments: the home, sport and recreation, the workplace, and the road. Injuries across those four categories combined generated more than 20 million days away from work and an estimated $5.5 billion in lost productivity during the year. The report does not provide year-on-year comparisons for those figures, leaving the direction of travel unclear.
ACC chief executive Megan Main said the cumulative effect of that claims volume reaches beyond individual claimants. “Injuries also reduce capacity across New Zealand’s workforce, affecting the health of our entire economy,” Main said.
Road injuries present the starkest illustration of the gap between claim frequency and financial exposure within the scheme. In 2025, they comprised less than 2% of total claims but accounted for 11% of total scheme expenditure – a ratio driven by the severity and clinical complexity of injuries sustained in road incidents. The average cost per road injury claim reached $14,500, roughly 10 times the per-claim average for sports injuries and three times that of workplace injuries. Those three figures – $14,500 per road claim, approximately $1,500 per sports claim, and approximately $4,800 per workplace claim – illustrate how claim type, rather than claim volume, determines a significant portion of scheme expenditure. The category generated 1.3 million days of weekly compensation, $201 million in direct scheme costs, and $549 million in estimated lost productivity.
Roughly half of all injury claims in 2025 originated in the home, producing 6.4 million days of weekly compensation – more than any other environment. Home injuries cost the scheme $934 million and contributed an estimated $2.7 billion in lost productivity. Falls during routine domestic activity – moving between rooms, getting in and out of bed, carrying out household tasks – were the predominant mechanism. The category’s scale makes it the largest single driver of compensation days within the scheme. Unlike workplace or road injuries, where employer obligations and regulatory frameworks provide direct intervention points, home injuries occur outside institutional oversight, making prevention a more diffuse challenge for the scheme.
Sport and recreation injuries resulted in more than 480,000 claims in 2025, generating 2.5 million days of weekly compensation, $389 million in scheme costs, and an estimated $1 billion in lost productivity. Within this group, gym and fitness-related injury claims rose 10% year-on-year, placing them ahead of rugby as the largest contributor to sport and recreation claims.
The shift marks a movement in claim pressure away from a traditionally high-profile contact sport toward a growing and more diffuse activity category. The source data does not break down average claim durations or rehabilitation trajectories by sport type, leaving open the question of whether gym injuries carry different cost profiles per claim than rugby injuries – a distinction that would be material to how the scheme manages this category going forward.
On-the-job injuries resulted in 4.7 million days of weekly compensation in 2025, cost the scheme $815 million, and contributed an estimated $2 billion in lost productivity. The report identifies agriculture, manufacturing, and construction as the sectors where workplace injuries most commonly occur, consistent with the physical demands of those industries – machinery operation, vehicle use, manual handling, and work at height are the predominant risk factors cited.
In April 2026, ACC published return-to-work guidelines for seven surgical procedures, developed with the New Zealand Orthopaedic Association (NZOA) and its specialty bodies. The procedures covered include anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) reconstruction, rotator cuff repair, lumbar discectomy, lumbar fusion, knee arthroscopy, ankle lateral ligament reconstruction, and total or partial knee replacement. The guidelines give certifying providers – the practitioners responsible for issuing medical certificates that determine compensation eligibility – a consistent, evidence-based reference for advising patients on recovery timelines, with direct implications for the length of compensation periods attached to post-surgical claims.
NZOA ACC and Third Party Liaison Committee chair Alex Malone said the association backs the framework within defined limits. “The NZOA is pleased to have collaborated with ACC and endorses these guidelines as a practical, evidence-informed framework to support safe and appropriate return to work following surgery, while recognising the importance of individual clinical judgement and patient-specific factors,” Malone said.
ACC has framed the guidelines as part of its Turnaround Plan effort to improve return-to-work outcomes. ACC chief clinical officer Dr. Debbie Holdsworth said the plan sets out what the corporation will deliver to improve performance and achieve better recovery outcomes for injured New Zealanders – with getting people back to work and independence identified as a key priority.
The April 2026 Monthly Turnaround Plan Report, published May 29, 2026, showed the long-term claims pool – which tracks clients on ongoing weekly compensation – declined by 131 claims during April to reach 24,715, recording zero growth for the month. ACC connected the result to focused effort on clients with less serious injuries such as sprains and strains, with return-to-work rates improving across the same period. The source material does not quantify the share of long-term compensation claims that originate from surgical procedures, leaving the precise contribution of the new guidelines to future pool reductions unresolved. Subsequent monthly reports will determine whether the April result reflects a durable shift or a single-month movement.
The Turnaround Plan, initiated in January 2026 following an independent review of ACC’s claims management and rehabilitation performance, organises reform priorities around three areas: client-centred care, return to work and independence, and internal organisational reset. Main said the result represents progress while broader work continues. “We are focused on improving the things that are in our control and shifting the way people think about their recovery if they get injured. But there is more to do, and everyone has a part to play,” she said.
ACC said it is working with primary care providers and employers to support rehabilitation outcomes. The corporation has identified employer engagement as a material factor in recovery, noting that clients who remain connected to their workplace during recovery are more likely to return to full employment. Whether that engagement can be scaled across the two million-plus claims the scheme processes annually remains the central operational question the injury data puts on the table. Monthly Turnaround Plan progress reports are published on the final business day of each month.
