New Zealand’s insurance industry should act fast as the government moves to implement an open data system, Deloitte says.

The Consumer Product and Data Act 2025 has a consumer data right framework to allow customer and product data to be shared between businesses, with consent.

It currently applies to banking only, but utilities, communications and insurance are tipped to be added.

Deloitte says if insurers act early, they can shape how open insurance would work, rather than the model being disintermediated by third-party aggregators with established open data capabilities.

Insurers should engage with one another, regulators and other industry players to align on priority use cases, establish shared foundations and design a commercially sustainable model. This would have governance, standards and customer experience frameworks, Deloitte says.

Open insurance would allow customers to direct organisations to securely share their data with accredited third parties via standardised application programming interfaces – APIs.

It would improve transparency and trust for consumers, improve insurers’ customer insights, and give brokers and intermediaries more nuanced customer insights, improved advice and more efficient servicing, Deloitte says.

“Across onboarding, servicing and claims, open insurance would enable consented reuse of existing customer data, reducing repetition, manual effort and delays.”

Although the government has not designated insurance under the Consumer Product and Data Act, Deloitte says proactive leadership enables early movers to influence standards, test solutions and build capability.

Implementing open insurance would require real investment, it notes, adding: “Australia’s largely compliance-led and prescriptive approach has resulted in high costs and limited innovation.”

Australia introduced open banking under the Consumer Data Right in 2020 and it has delivered benefits such as saving mortgage brokers 40 minutes of onboarding time per customer. However, a prescriptive approach to design has meant greater complexity, compliance costs and slower uptake, Deloitte says.