For the second year in a row, and the fourth time in the last five years, consumers in Aotearoa/New Zealand have rated ICMIF member FMG the winner of the Canstar Most Satisfied Customers Home & Contents Insurance Award.
People across Aotearoa/New Zealand experienced a challenging start to the year, as destructive weather events wreaked havoc across vast swathes of the country. This particularly affected the rural communities that FMG protects.
Canstar’s Editor, Bruce Pitchers notes in his article about FMG’s success that regardless of whether people live in an area prone to natural disasters, or one more susceptible to man-made risk and human transgressions, adequate insurance cover for valued possessions is essential.
Pitchers also notes that even before extreme weather events experienced this year, including the Auckland Anniversary Weekend floods and Cyclone Gabrielle, home and contents insurance premiums were on the rise. This was due, in part, to the changes to the Earthquake Commission levy, but also because of insurance companies’ reassessment of their customers’ risk profiles.
Canstar says its mission is to inform consumers of the best that Aotearoa/New Zealand has to offer and each year Canstar asks home and contents policy holders to rate their satisfaction with their insurers.
This year, Canstar canvassed the opinions of 2531 New Zealanders who pay for home and contents insurance, and asked them to rate their insurers across a range of categories, to measure and track their levels of customer satisfaction.
To decide which home and contents insurance provider offers the best level of customer satisfaction, each was rated across the following categories:
- Overall satisfaction
- Communication
- Comprehensiveness of cover
- Cost
- Customer service
- Value for money
ICMIF member FMG once again came out on top as the clear winner of Canstar’s 2023 award for Most Satisfied Customers Home and Contents Insurance.
This is the second year in a row that FMG has received this Customer Satisfaction Award, and the fourth time in five years the insurer has been rated the nation’s best by its many happy customers.
And, once again, FMG headed the awards table with a near perfect set of scores: 5-Star perfection across all categories, except for a great 4-Star rating for cost. Canstar says it is worth noting that out of the 12 insurers judged in this year’s award, FMG is the only provider to earn any 5-Star ratings.
While cost is always an important factor for consumers, Canstar says it is witnessing a trend across all of its ratings of an increased emphasis on value for money.
Reflecting this trend, this year, value for money (25%) is almost level with customer service (24%) as one of the two top factors driving insurance customers’ satisfaction levels with their providers.
Comprehensiveness of cover, cost and communication are also equally important to consumers according to Canstar’s breakdown of what’s most important for consumers when rating their insurance providers:
- Value for money: 25%
- Customer service: 24%
- Comprehensiveness of cover: 17%
- Cost: 17%
- Communication: 16%
