In a deeper dive, we dig into the competitive world of car insurance, and are surprised to find an unusually wide range of quoted premium costs between the five insurers we reviewed

Previously, we have pointed out how volatile car insurance premium changes can be. That is revealed in StatsNZ CPI component tracking.

Now we want to look at how much quotes for car insurance vary between insurers.

A number of them have on-line quoting resources, and we have been tracking them all year. We will report on the volatility in a separate review, but now we want to point out how big the range of quotes are between them.

Car insurance is best approached first knowing what cover you need, and how much claims deductible you are prepared to tolerate. There is no point just chasing the cheapest premium if it doesn't give you the cover you need if you have to make a claim. That's the point of insurance.

So before you look below, make sure you know the policy coverage and conditions you need.

Premium levels are very dependent on the type of car, who the driver is, how it is stored, and where it is stored.

For this review, we established some standard addresses in Auckland, Wellington, and Christchurch, and a standard driver profile. Then we applied these to the most popular new car currently sold in 2025, and the most popular used/import car sold three years ago.

Surprisingly, that revealed an unexpectedly wide range of quoted premiums when we used each of the five insurerer online tools in this review.

For a new Toyota RAV4, this is what it revealed in the week ended November 17, 2025.

and for a used-import Toyota Aqua, it was like this.

Both reviews are 'standardised'. They won't relate to your situation, so doing this exercise yourself, with your driver profile, your vehicle, and your location profile, will give a different result.

What we have shown here however is the surprisingly wide premium differences between the insurers, and the quite different results between the three cities we covered.

This is a strong signal that you should shop around, and for your car get at least five quotes. Five is an unusual recommendation, far more effort than the standard 'three' usually recommended. But as you can see in our results, there can be significant savings, and you won't know until you check.

Fortunately, the insurers online tools make that pretty easy.

For another way to check the ranges, we have partnered with insurance comparison site Quashed to launch a new tool that can suggest how your own specific vehicle will attract insurance premium cost. It too gives a range of expected premium levels, more targeted to your specific vehicle.

Here is the tool. You only need enter your registration number to get a result.