Insurance comparison website Quashed says insurance premiums for Kiwis have continued to rise across the board over the past year.
The latest insurance data from Quashed for the third quarter (Q3) found general insurance premiums are up 17% compared to Q3 2023.
Car insurance premiums were found to have climbed 18% to $1,342, house insurance rose 17% to $2,702 and contents insurance was up 12% to $842.
Across the country’s three biggest cities – Auckland, Christchurch and Wellington – Quashed found car insurance cost the most in Auckland at $1,579 and the least in Wellington at $1,193.
For house insurance, it was the opposite: house insurance premiums were the most in Wellington at $4,467 and the least in Auckland at $2,104.
Wellington beat Auckland again when it came to comparing contents insurance premiums to a year earlier. They were the most in Wellington at $1,054 and the least in Auckland at $755.
How different age groups are faring
Chief Executive Justin Lim said one piece from the research Quashed found interesting was which age groups had been hardest hit by increases in insurance premiums.
Age wise, Quashed found 40-50 year-olds are seeing the highest increases for general insurance, up 23% in a year – and are also paying the most in house insurance at $2,995.
However, 25-30 year-olds have seen the biggest increase in the cost of house insurance over a two-year period – 49% – and are also paying the most for contents insurance over the past two years, up 43% to $888.
Lim said despite the increase in insurance costs across the board, more than 90% of Quashed users were not adjusting the sum insured or excess amount of their insurance policy when comparing quotes, meaning they were generally defaulting to $250 excess on contents insurance, $500 excess on car insurance and $1,000 excess on home insurance.
Adjusting both sum insured and excess could result in 15% to 20% savings in premiums every year, which across a household’s general insurance bill could be $978 a year in savings, he said.
Chicken and egg
Lim said it had been a good year for the platform, with insurance continuing to be a focus for people as premiums keep rising. This in turn had led more people to Quashed.
Quashed was launched in 2020 and working via a browser instead of an app, it lets consumers upload their insurance policy documents to access detailed information about their plans, costs, and renewal dates on one page. The platform also has a comparison tool that analyses and compares insurance policies with other options.
Lim described it as a chicken and egg situation where the more consumers use the platform, the more insurers are interested in what the platform offers.
“And if you’ve got more insurance companies on there, you’ve got more products that you can offer in terms of helping consumers make it easy to shop and compare,” he said.
“I think we’re adding value both ways.”
The site now has 10 insurers on board with another two hopefully coming onto the platform before the end of the year, Lim said.
Total platform users are now up to 50,000, a 250% increase from last year. The next goal is 100,000 users which the company wants to reach next year.
Quashed also gained $1 million in investment from Turners Automotive Group earlier this year, which represents a 13% stake in the company.
Turners called it a “strategic investment” when announcing the news in August and the company’s CEO Todd Hunter described it as “clearly complementary to our core business of selling used cars”.
Lim told interest.co.nz that Turners had a massive reach across the country.
“We’re really hoping to kind of leverage that relationship that we’ve got with them and hopefully be able to reach a lot more Kiwis,” he said.
