The path a New Zealander takes from a vague worry about cover to a submitted enquiry, and what each stage means for the leads you buy.
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.
Protection is not shopped the way a mortgage rate is shopped. Nobody wakes up planning to research income protection, which shapes everything about what an enquiry means when it arrives.
Large and largely unmet. FSC research found 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 ranks New Zealand among the more underinsured OECD markets for life and health risks.
At the same time the FSC 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. Cover exists; adequacy is the gap.
| Hold life insurance | 41% |
|---|---|
| Hold income protection | 11% |
| Underinsured | ~70% |
Most people you reach have considered cover before and not completed it. That is a different conversation from introducing the idea.
A trigger, almost always. The research stage does not begin because somebody decided to be responsible; it begins because something changed.
The trigger is the single most useful thing to establish on a first call, because it determines urgency and it is rarely on the record.
Shorter and more compressed than it was. Consumers increasingly get their orienting answer from an AI summary rather than by reading several pages. Pew Research found that when an AI summary is present, users click a traditional result on 8% of visits against 15% without one, and click a link inside the summary on just 1% of visits.
The practical consequence is that a person arriving at an enquiry form has often already formed a view about what they need, without ever visiting a site that could be attributed. They arrive further along and with less traceable history.
What that means for the first call: Assume the person has a partly formed view and ask what it is before correcting it. A consumer who has been told something by a chatbot has an anchor, and arguing with the anchor before understanding it is the fastest way to lose the call.
This is where most enquiries are lost, and where quality is decided for whoever buys the record. A form that asks for too much produces fewer, better-qualified enquiries. A form that asks for almost nothing produces volume and very little intent.
It is also where verification either happens or does not. A one-time code completed inside the flow establishes that a person holding that handset was present, which is the strongest single predictor of whether the record will produce a conversation.
Reactively rather than on a schedule. Research is usually triggered by an event: a new or increased mortgage, a new child, a health event in the family, or a change of employment that removes group cover. FSC research found 41% of respondents hold life insurance and 11% hold income protection, with around 70% underinsured, so most enquiries come from people who have considered cover before and not completed it.
Yes. FSC research found around 70% of New Zealanders are underinsured, with 41% holding life insurance and 11% holding income protection. The FSC ranks New Zealand among the more underinsured OECD markets for life and health risks, describing limited financial buffers for households facing death, serious illness or income disruption.
It compresses the comparison stage. Pew Research found that when an AI summary appears, users click a traditional search result on 8% of visits against 15% without one, and click a link inside the summary on about 1% of visits. Consumers arrive at enquiry forms with a partly formed view and much less traceable browsing history.
What prompted them to look into it. The trigger event decides urgency, it is rarely captured on the record, and asking for it before saying anything about cover signals that you are not about to pitch, which is what keeps the conversation going.