New Financial Markets Authority research has found standard insurance products are structurally mismatched with how whenua Māori is actually owned and governed, with participants nearly twice as likely as the general population to have experienced an insurance problem in the past two years.
The report, led by Dr Lara Greaves as part of the FMA's Matangirua programme, surveyed 952 participants and found affordability was the strongest barrier, with 82% agreeing people do not have enough money for insurance costs, alongside distrust, accessible information and product suitability.
FMA strategic adviser Māori Hannah Chapman said current insurance settings "do not accommodate whenua Māori and multiple or collective ownership." That gap includes papakāinga and marae specifically.
That mismatch is a product design and distribution issue as much as an affordability one. Standard policies are typically underwritten around individual title, while whenua Māori is commonly held under collective or multiple ownership structures with intergenerational governance, a structure most mainstream insurance products were never built to reflect.
There is already a working precedent for a different approach. Tainui Group Holdings negotiated a group insurance scheme covering marae across the iwi, arranged through a broker, which reduced premium costs significantly while giving individual marae more control over how claims were settled. It is the kind of iwi-led model the FMA's research found strong support for, with 71% of participants backing Māori-designed approaches and the same share supporting trusted navigators to help with claims.
For brokers and advisers, the report points to a specific opportunity rather than a general access problem: building the cultural literacy to work with collective ownership structures and trust-based governance, and being positioned as the "trusted navigator" participants say they want, particularly around claims. FMA executive director Liam Mason said the findings are intended as "a starting point for discussion rather than an endpoint," with continued engagement planned with iwi, hapū and industry.
