Editorial Policy: What We Publish and What We Removed

The rules we write by

Every figure is sourced and dated. A named source, its own page, and the date we read it. If we cannot cite it, it does not appear, however obvious it seems.
Every legal statement is quoted, not paraphrased. The Acts and Regulations are read at legislation.govt.nz and quoted verbatim with the section number, so you can check us rather than trust us.
A dropped claim beats a guessed one. This is money people are deciding about at the worst moments of their lives. A premium that is nearly right is worse than no premium at all.
We invent nothing. No businesses, no people, no reviews, no ratings, no licence numbers, no statistics. There are no testimonials, no star ratings and no case studies on this site, because we have none that are real.
We never hold ourselves out as an adviser. Not in copy, not in a heading, not in the structured data. Life Insurance NZ gives no financial advice and is not licensed to.
No calculator default is invented.Every input starts empty. A default nobody can source quietly becomes the reader’s answer, and that is worse than an empty box.
Nobody pays for coverage. No insurer and no adviser pays us for content, placement, a mention or a link. Our one revenue source is disclosed on the disclosure page and in a line above every referral button.
Articles are written by the organisation.There is no personal byline on this site and no link to anybody’s personal website.
We re-check. The legislation, the insurer register and the ACC and IRD pages are re-read against their sources quarterly. Everything here was last checked on 2026-09-16.

The calculator’s method, in full

There is no hidden model. The formula is:

(debts + (annual after-tax income × years) + one-off costs) − (savings + KiwiSaver + existing cover)

Every term is a number the visitor typed. Nothing is assumed, weighted or adjusted.
The result is rounded to the nearest $10,000, because a rule of thumb does not have five-figure precision.
It runs in the browser. Nothing is transmitted or stored, and one analytics event records that somebody started, with no amounts attached.
It recommends no product, no insurer, no cover type and no amount, and it never uses the words “you need”.

The calculator page lists what the formula assumes and everything it ignores, including inflation, tax, and every fact about the person using it.

What we removed, and why

An earlier version of this site was a broker directory. It carried invented businesses, unsourced figures and claims about itself that were not true. All of it is gone. Publishing the list is part of the point: if we get something wrong again, this is where it will be recorded.

Claims removed before launch, and things we looked for and could not source. Checked 2026-09-16.
What is not on this site	Why
Premium tables by age, gender, smoker status and cover amount	Only one New Zealand source publishing dated premiums with its inputs stated could be loaded (MoneyHub, updated 14 September 2026), and that page discloses that the broker supplying most of its quotes pays it a monthly fee to appear there. That is a commercially supported comparison, not an index, so we link to it and reproduce none of its figures. Consumer NZ's life insurance content is behind a members' paywall. Canstar NZ publishes rating factors but no dollar figures. No insurer publishes a premium table of its own that we could find.
“A life insurance payout is tax free in New Zealand”	Inland Revenue has no page stating this for a beneficiary that we could load. Its insurance payouts page says only that insurance payouts are generally excluded income, and then carves out income protection and personal sickness policies. One insurer markets its product as a “tax-free lump sum”, but that is a seller's claim, not an IRD source. So the site does not answer the question and says who can.
“Income protection usually replaces about 75% of your income”	A figure repeated everywhere in this market with no New Zealand source behind it. The proportion is set by the policy. The cover pages say that instead of quoting a number.
Typical waiting periods and benefit periods for income protection	Same reason. These are policy terms, and no source gives a New Zealand typical value we could cite.
$250,000 per dependent child, and age multipliers of 1.1 and 0.85, in the cover calculator	These were in the previous version of this site's calculator with no source at all. They are gone. The calculator now starts every box empty, because a default nobody can source quietly becomes the reader's answer.
“Recommended sum insured” and “Talk to a broker about $X” in the calculator result	Wording that reads as a recommendation about how much cover a particular person should acquire, which is the definition of financial advice in Financial Markets Conduct Act 2013 s 431C(1)(a). The result is now labelled a general estimate from a rule of thumb, with the arithmetic printed underneath.
Twelve broker listings: Tasman Cover, Kowhai Life Brokers, Harbour Bridge Advisory, South Coast Cover, Miramar Life & Risk, Port Hills Protection, Rangiora Family Cover, Waikato Rural Life, Mauao Mortgage Cover, Otago Cover Review, Wakatipu Private Cover and Wanaka Mountain Life	None of those businesses exists. They were invented, and they carried invented FAP labels and “years advising”. Every one of those URLs now returns 410 Gone rather than redirecting, so the invented names stop circulating and nothing implies a successor.
Seven regional pages claiming “FSPR-registered NZ life insurance brokers across every region” and “at least one vetted local adviser in each major NZ market”	Nothing was vetted and no adviser was listed, because the listings were not real. The regional URLs now redirect to the page that explains how to find and check a licensed adviser yourself.
“We don't take commission from insurers”, “Independent”, “Whole NZ market”, “Whole-of-market quotes”	We take a referral fee from one adviser firm, which is disclosed on every page that leads to the form. We reach no market, quote nothing and are not independent of the firm that pays us. Claiming otherwise would be misleading conduct under Fair Trading Act 1986 s 9.
“Written by humans who've actually claimed on a policy” and “Editorial team based in Aotearoa”	There is no team and no such claim history. Articles are written by the organisation, with no byline.
FinancialAdvisorService structured data on every page	Marking this site up as a financial advisory service is holding out in machine-readable form, and FMCA s 431G does not care what format the holding out is in. The site is now marked up as a plain Organization.
“A broker will be in touch within two business days”	A promise about somebody else's behaviour, made before any agreement existed with anybody. No timeframe appears anywhere until one is written into a signed referral agreement.
Financial Markets Authority guidance on financial advice, holding out and referrers	fma.govt.nz returns HTTP 403 to every scripted request, on four attempts across two sessions, behind a Cloudflare challenge. Nothing on this site is attributed to the FMA. Every legal statement here is quoted from legislation.govt.nz instead, and the FMA guidance is on the list for the lawyer who reviews this site before introductions open.
ACC “pays 80% with no waiting period beyond the first week”, stated flatly	Two different 80% figures were being run together. ACC's own weekly compensation usually starts on day 8; for a work injury it is the employer who must pay 80% of usual pay for the first week. The guide now quotes ACC for each of those separately.
“Cigna” and “Westpac Life” as New Zealand life insurers	Neither appears on the RBNZ Register of Licensed Insurers. The insurers page says so rather than quietly leaving them out, because people search for both names.
Regional and city pages for life insurance	Not a removal for sourcing reasons but worth recording: location intent is weak here, advice is given nationwide by phone and video, and the previous version's region pages existed only to carry invented broker listings.

What we will not publish, ever

A “best life insurance” ranking.Best for whom? Ranking policies without knowing a person’s health, budget and circumstances is either meaningless or advice, and we are not allowed to give advice.
Live quotes or a quote engine.We hold no insurer relationships and no rates, and a “quote” that skips health questions is not a price.
Reviews, ratings or testimonials. We have none that are real.
A recommendation about your cover. Not the amount, not the type, not the insurer. That is what a licensed adviser is for, and it is the one thing we introduce people for.
Health questions. We ask for none, anywhere, including on the referral form.

Corrections

If something here is wrong, tell us and we will re-read the source and fix it, and record the change on this page. Insurers restructure, ACC and IRD update their pages, and legislation is amended; we would rather have the correction than not. Contact us.

If this site and a source disagree, the source is right. That applies to legislation.govt.nz, to ACC, to Inland Revenue, to the Reserve Bank register and to an insurer’s own policy wording.

What we publish, and what we took down