What New Zealand insurance advisers should pay for an enquiry, how to judge quality before you commit, and why the underinsurance gap changes the maths.
Figures in this article describe the wider market and are drawn from the third-party sources listed at the end. They are not Lead Foundry results, and nothing here is a projection of what any individual broker will achieve.
The New Zealand protection market has an unusual shape for anyone buying leads. Demand is large and largely unmet, which sounds like an easy market until you try to reach it, at which point the difficulty becomes obvious: people who are underinsured are, almost by definition, people who have not gone looking.
That makes the enquiry itself valuable. A New Zealander who has actively submitted a request about cover has done the hard part.
Large, and well documented. Financial Services Council research found that only 41% of New Zealand respondents hold life insurance and just 11% hold income protection cover, with around 70% of New Zealanders underinsured. The FSC describes New Zealand as continuing to grapple with an underinsurance challenge, and ranks it among the more underinsured OECD markets for life and health risks.
The FSC also reports roughly 4.13 million life insurance policies and 1.35 million health insurance policies in force, against a population of about 5.35 million, with annual life premiums of NZ$3.31 billion.
| Hold life insurance | 41% |
|---|---|
| Hold income protection | 11% |
| Underinsured | ~70% |
The gap between the first two bars and the third is the market. It is also the reason a genuine, self-initiated enquiry about cover is worth more than its equivalent in a saturated category.
No official New Zealand or Australian dataset on lead pricing exists. The ranges below are working benchmarks assembled from vendor quotes, international mortgage lead markets where the economics are comparable, and the published cost of generating equivalent enquiry through paid search. Treat them as a place to start a negotiation rather than as measured market data.
| Lead type | Working NZ range per lead | Practical read |
|---|---|---|
| Shared, sold to several advisers | NZ$15 to $50 | Low unit price, and a contact race you will often lose |
| Exclusive, sold once | NZ$60 to $150 | One conversation, no competing callers |
| Aged or resold data | Under NZ$15 | Usually a consumer who has already been called repeatedly |
Insurance economics differ from mortgage economics in one way that matters: the revenue is recurring. A client who stays on the books for years is worth a multiple of the first year's commission, which raises the allowable cost per client and makes quality more affordable than a single-transaction model would suggest.
Where the maths turns: Work from the lifetime value of a retained client rather than from first-year commission. A supplier whose enquiries produce clients who stay is worth substantially more per lead than one whose enquiries produce policies that lapse, and the unit price will not tell you which is which.
The same four variables apply as in any category, with one addition specific to insurance: whether the consumer already holds cover. A person with existing cover asking about a review is a different conversation from a person with none, and the two belong in different parts of your week.
Two apply to every New Zealand adviser working a purchased enquiry, regardless of the supplier's standards.
The first is the Code of Professional Conduct for Financial Advice Services, which applies to the advice you give from the moment the conversation becomes regulated financial advice. A purchased enquiry does not lower the standard, and the fact that a consumer submitted a form does not establish that the advice you go on to give is suitable.
The second is IPP 3A of the Privacy Act 2020. When you collect personal information about someone from a source other than that person, you have to take reasonable steps to make them aware of the collection, its purpose, and who holds it. Buying an enquiry is precisely that. The cleanest way to satisfy it is a supplier whose form already discloses that the enquiry goes to a licensed adviser, plus a first call that says how you came to be calling.
Commercial electronic messages are separately governed by the Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act 2007, which requires consent, accurate sender identification, and a functional unsubscribe on any commercial message sent to a New Zealand address.
The artefact to ask for: Ask the supplier what the consumer saw on the form about onward supply, and ask to see it on the live page. That single artefact determines whether your IPP 3A obligation was largely handled at the source or falls entirely on your first call.
Buy 30 to 50 enquiries and work every one through an identical six-attempt cadence. Measure contact rate first, then whether the people who answered recognised the enquiry, then whether their situation matched what the record said. Those three answers tell you whether the data is real.
Do not attempt to judge profitability from a first trial. Conversion to a placed policy has a low enough base rate that a sample under 100 is dominated by chance, and a supplier judged on 30 leads is being judged on luck.
| Signal in the trial | What it means | Action |
|---|---|---|
| Numbers disconnected or wrong | Verification is not real | Stop and claim replacements |
| Consumers do not recall enquiring | Aged data, or a misleading landing page | Ask for the source URL |
| Other advisers already called | Shared supply, or resale after a window | Check the exclusivity term in writing |
| Contact rate holds, appointments do not | The data is fine and the first call needs work | Keep buying, fix the script |
The most common failure is not fraud. It is a mismatch between what the landing page promised and what the adviser sells. A page offering a free comparison produces a person expecting a comparison. A page implying an entitlement produces a person expecting money. Both produce records that look identical in a CRM.
This is the single strongest argument for buying from an operator who owns the consumer brand. When the operator owns the page, a quality complaint can be traced to specific wording and fixed. When the operator bought the traffic from a network, the same complaint can only produce an apology.
No published New Zealand dataset exists, so quoted figures are working benchmarks. Shared enquiries commonly quote around NZ$15 to $50 and exclusive enquiries around NZ$60 to $150. Because insurance revenue is recurring, the allowable cost per client is usually higher than advisers assume, so judge a price against the lifetime value of a retained client rather than against first-year commission.
Yes. Buying enquiry data is legal. You must hold or operate under a Financial Advice Provider licence to give regulated financial advice, meet the Code of Professional Conduct for Financial Advice Services, satisfy IPP 3A of the Privacy Act 2020 by making the consumer aware you obtained their details indirectly, and comply with the Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act 2007 for any commercial electronic messages.
FSC research found only 41% of respondents hold life insurance and 11% hold income protection, with around 70% underinsured. The FSC ranks New Zealand among the more underinsured OECD markets for life and health risks, describing limited financial buffers for many households facing death, serious illness or income disruption.
A verified phone number with a timestamp showing the consumer completed a code during the form, exclusivity that is permanent and contractual, delivery within minutes of submission, the consumer's own description of the cover they wanted, and a note of whether they already hold cover. The last of those changes the entire shape of the first conversation.