A story ran in Stuff in July that is worth reading if you hold life insurance. It is not a scandal, and I do not think anyone in it behaved badly. It is a story about what happens when no one's particular job is your file.
A woman in Rotorua, 43, a volunteer firefighter, was diagnosed with a brain tumour and had surgery booked for 23 July. Sensibly, she set about putting her affairs in order. She went into her local ASB branch and asked for a copy of the life insurance policy she had been paying since 2013: a $375,000 plan, underwritten and administered by AIA, at $25 a fortnight.
Staff could see the policy on the AIA app while she stood there. What they could not do was hand her the document. Her options were a 28-minute wait on the phone, or an emailed request answered in five to ten working days. A complaint was lodged at the branch. Two days later she still had nothing.
When Stuff put questions to both organisations, the documents were released within the hour, to her husband, who turned out to be the named policy owner.
Policy owner, life assured, policyholder
Three words, and everyday speech treats them as one. They are not.
The policy owner owns the contract. They can request the documents, alter the cover, cancel it, and in most wordings direct where the proceeds go. The life assured is the person whose life or health the cover is written on. Policyholder is loose usage that blurs the two, which is fine in conversation and best avoided when something is at stake.
Very often the owner and the life assured are the same person. In couples they are frequently crossed over on purpose, each owning the cover written on the other, so that a claim pays directly rather than travelling through an estate. It is a deliberate structure with real advantages, and it is invisible from the outside.
So a woman can pay premiums for thirteen years, log into the app, see her own name and her own sum assured, and still not be the person entitled to request the file. She was the life assured. Her husband was the owner. Nothing about that is unusual, and none of it is her fault. She had no reason to know the distinction existed. Knowing it, and explaining it at the time, is an adviser's job.
Why large insurers work the way they do
AIA administers an enormous number of policies. Verification scripts, privacy protocols and call queues exist because they have to. The alternative is a company that hands over a stranger's insurance file to whoever asks pleasantly at a counter, and that is considerably worse. AIA said afterwards that the experience fell short of what it aims for, spoke to her directly, and provided the documents. That is a reasonable response from an organisation of that size.
An insurer of that scale is entitled to its procedures. It has them for good reason, it will not be abandoning them, and on the day a claim is paid those same procedures are what make the payment dependable.
The question worth asking is a different one. Who was to stand between her and it?
Where the intermediary fits
Life cover arranged across a bank counter is a volume proposition. It sits alongside accounts, cards and mortgages, priced and processed at scale, which is exactly what makes it available to people who would otherwise have nothing at all. That is a genuine public good, and I would not wish it away.
Volume distribution carries one structural consequence. After the sale, the relationship belongs to no one in particular. Whoever arranged the cover in 2013 has almost certainly moved on, and no file anywhere bears a particular name. So when something is wanted in a hurry thirteen years later, the customer is routed into the insurer's administrative machinery, because there is nowhere else to go.
The regulators identified this a long time ago. In January 2019 the FMA and the Reserve Bank published their joint review of sixteen New Zealand life insurers and found that where sales were made through an intermediary, there was a serious lack of insurer oversight and responsibility for the sales and advice, and customer outcomes. Adrian Orr, then Governor, said insurers need to take responsibility for whether customers are experiencing good outcomes from their products, regardless of how they are sold.
The Conduct of Financial Institutions regime, in full effect since 31 March 2025, was built partly to close that gap, and it is a sound piece of law. It will not, however, put a name and a direct line beside your policy. No regime can legislate that.
What my clients experience
I hold the full document for every policy I place. Not a portal link, not a summary of benefits. The wording, the schedule, and the ownership.
If a client rings and asks for it, they have it the same day, from me, without being asked to prove who they are. There is no queue, because I look after a deliberately limited number of families. That is the design of the practice rather than an accident of its size.
My clients know who owns their policies, because we decided the ownership together and I explained why at the time. Where cover sits with a spouse, a trust or a company, that was a considered choice. It is not something to discover at a counter three days before an operation.
My clients do not fill in forms. I prepare the applications, they read what I have written and sign, and I deal with the underwriter. At claim time they do not assemble the file. My office does.
One thing is signed at the outset: an acknowledgement that my disclosure statement has been received and understood. I give no advice before that.
The relationships I want are the ones that run across decades and, in time, across generations. You do not build those by placing a policy and then disappearing for ten years. You build them by being the person who answers the phone in a difficult week, and by ensuring that in a difficult week there is nothing to look for, because it is already to hand.
The practical point
Find out who owns your policies. Exactly, not roughly. Ask for the schedule, read the owner field, and if the answer is not what you assumed, attend to it now, and not in a hospital waiting room.
Then ask a second question. If you needed your full policy wording this afternoon, whose number would you dial, and would they know your name?
If the answer is a portal, an 0800 number or an email queue, nothing is wrong. It is worth knowing, and far easier to change while you are well.
Arrange a time to talk. We meet in person, in Hamilton or wherever suits you.
Sources: Natalie Akoorie, Stuff, 15 July 2026; Roxanne Libatique, Insurance Business New Zealand, 16 July 2026, including AIA New Zealand's statement to that publication; FMA and Reserve Bank of New Zealand, Life Insurer Conduct and Culture, media release MR 2019-02, 29 January 2019; FMA media release MR 2025-07, 31 March 2025.