"Later, when things settle down."
That sentence, or something close to it, is how a lot of conversations about insurance end when the person is under about thirty-five. It isn't carelessness. It's a sensible-sounding deferral to a moment that used to arrive more or less on schedule, and increasingly doesn't.
Deloitte Deloitte published its 2026 Gen Z and Millennial survey on 8 July. Fifteenth year of it, 44 countries, more than 22,500 respondents, 501 of them here. The New Zealand result: 64% of Gen Z and 67% of millennials have put off a major life decision because of money. The global figures for the same question are 55% and 52%.
We are worse than average, and not by a rounding error.
What is being deferred matters more than the deferral itself. Housing, children, changes of career. Those are the events our profession has quietly relied on to start the conversation for us. Seventy-two percent of New Zealand Gen Z told Deloitte that housing affordability shapes not only where they live but what work they are able to take.
A mortgage has historically done half an adviser's job. The bank raises the question, the borrower thinks about the answer, and somebody picks up the phone. Remove the mortgage and nothing steps into its place.
What people actually think about cover
Something surprised me when I went back to the Financial Services Council's research rather than the commentary written about it.
The FSC's Money and You work found 41% of New Zealanders hold life insurance and 39% hold health cover. Low, and much discussed. Two other findings get quoted far less often. Over 90% of the people who do hold cover consider it good value for money. And over 70% of New Zealanders understand the limitations of insurance, including the effect of age and illness on premiums and availability.
That is not a picture of a confused public.
There is a habit in this industry of explaining low uptake by assuming people do not understand the product. The FSC's own data does not really support it, and I would suggest the assumption tells you more about the industry than about the public. Most people grasp perfectly well that cover becomes dearer and harder to get as you age. What they are short of is not comprehension. It is an occasion.
Where cost genuinely bites
None of which waves away affordability. It runs through the FSC research as the dominant barrier and the leading reason people cancel, and when housing takes what it currently takes, a monthly premium competes with rent in a way it did not twenty years ago.
But affordability and ignorance are different problems and they have different remedies. You address cost with structure: cover sized to what is manageable now, reviewed upward as income allows, rather than presented as all or nothing. You do not address it with a brochure.
The people best placed to raise it
Most commentary on this research is addressed to insurers and treats it as a distribution problem. I would put it somewhere else.
If you are a client of ours, you are probably between your mid-forties and mid-sixties, your own arrangements are settled, and you have adult children sitting squarely in the group Deloitte surveyed. Renting for longer than you did. Possibly deferring a family. And at the age when cover is cheapest and underwriting simplest, which is the one advantage of being young that nobody thinks to mention to them.
The mortgage used to raise the subject. If it is not going to, someone has to, and in most families that turns out to be a parent.
I am glad to have the conversation with them. There is no charge for a first meeting, and the only thing signed at it is an acknowledgement that they have received my disclosure statement and understood it.
Arrange a time to talk. We meet in person, in Hamilton or wherever suits you.
Sources: Deloitte Global Gen Z and Millennial Survey 2026, released 8 July 2026 (501 New Zealand respondents); Financial Services Council, Money and You: Managing Risk Through Challenging Times, and the FSC media release of 26 November 2024.