Guide

RBNZ Financial Strength Rating — Reading Your Motor Insurer's

Every licensed NZ insurer must publish a current financial strength rating from an approved rating agency. Here's where the rating comes from, what the letters mean, and how to look up your motor insurer.

The legal requirement

Under the Insurance (Prudential Supervision) Act 2010, every licensed insurer carrying on insurance business in New Zealand must hold a current financial strength rating from an approved rating agency. The rating must be:

  • Issued by an agency approved by the Reserve Bank of New Zealand (RBNZ) — the approved agencies are Standard & Poor's, AM Best, and Fitch Ratings
  • Current (re-affirmed at least annually)
  • Disclosed to consumers — typically on the insurer's website and on every Certificate of Insurance issued to customers

The RBNZ supervises insurers' solvency capital under the same Act and publishes the Register of Licensed Insurers. The Register lists every licensed NZ insurer and links to each insurer's regulatory disclosures.

What the letters mean

The three approved agencies use overlapping (but not identical) rating scales. The common ones you'll see on NZ motor insurer disclosures:

Standard & Poor's (S&P)

  • AAA — Extremely strong (rarely seen for NZ-only insurers)
  • AA — Very strong
  • A — Strong
  • BBB — Good (adequate)
  • BB and below — Vulnerable / weak (very rare on NZ-licensed retail insurers)

Plus/minus suffixes (e.g. A+, A-) refine within each band.

AM Best

  • A++ / A+ — Superior
  • A / A- — Excellent
  • B++ / B+ — Good
  • B / B- — Fair

Fitch Ratings

Fitch's insurer financial strength (IFS) scale mirrors S&P: AAA, AA, A, BBB, etc., with +/- modifiers.

Outlook flags

Alongside the letter rating, every approved agency publishes an outlook — typically Stable, Positive, Negative, or Watch (formal credit watch). The outlook tells you the agency's view of likely rating direction over the next 12–24 months. A Stable AA is materially different from an AA on Negative Watch.

NZ motor insurer ratings — where to find them

Each insurer must disclose its rating in two places:

  1. On its public website (typically a "Financial Strength" or "About Us" page)
  2. On the front of every Certificate of Insurance (the per-customer document, separate from the wording)

You can also look up the licensed-insurer entity on the RBNZ Register of Licensed Insurers. Many of the consumer motor brands you see in NZ are operated under a smaller number of licensed entities:

  • IAG New Zealand Limited — issues AMI, State, NZI policies (brands within one licensed entity)
  • Vero Insurance New Zealand Limited — Suncorp Group's NZ entity
  • Tower Limited — independent NZX-listed
  • AA Insurance Limited — joint venture, majority-held by IAG NZ alongside the NZ Automobile Association
  • FMG Insurance Limited — Farmers' Mutual Group (mutual)

For underwriting-agent brands (Cove, Initio, Star Insure, Trade Me Insurance, Protecta), the rating you should care about is that of the underwriting insurer — sometimes shown on the wording's first page.

What a rating tells you (and doesn't)

Tells you: the agency's view of the insurer's ability to pay future claims. Higher ratings mean lower likelihood of solvency failure within the rating horizon.

Doesn't tell you: claim settlement experience (how easy or hard claims are in practice), policy wording quality, premium fairness, complaint resolution speed. For those signals, see FSCL vs IFSO disputes data, Consumer NZ editorial reviews, and the verbatim policy facts on each insurer's profile page.

How we surface ratings

Each insurer profile on Car Insurance Comparison NZ has an "RBNZ Financial Strength" field. Where we have a verified current rating from the agency-direct source, it's shown there. Where we don't, we link to the RBNZ Register so you can look it up yourself rather than guess. Stale ratings are worse than no rating — they create a false impression of currency. Our standing rule is to leave the field empty + linked rather than show out-of-date letters.

Where to read more

Browse insurer profiles