Injury claim statistics

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Injury claim statistics

We collect data on all claims we receive. This includes how many claims we accept, where the injury happened, and how quickly we accept a claim for an injury.

We accepted
1,994,850
new claims in 2023.

We accept claims for injuries that happen anywhere in New Zealand – in the home, at work, on the road, or when playing sport.

Our no-fault scheme covers everyone. No matter what you were doing when you were injured or who was at fault. We’ll support you if the injury falls within our legislation.

We can help pay for medical bills, treatment, support at home and work, and help cover your income if you can’t work.

We collect data on all of this. We do this to improve the support we give you and better inform what levies we need to collect.

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Category and timeliness of the claims we accept

We classify claims as 'non-complicated' and 'complicated'.

Non-complicated claims

These claims fit within the rules of the Accident Compensation Act 2001. This means we can assess them quicker, with 97% of them decided within one week in 2023.

We accepted

99%
of new claims 2023.

Of these new claims

55%
were accepted within a minute in 2023.

Of new claims

80%
were accepted within 24 hours in 2023.

Complicated claims

These claims also fit within the rules of the Act but need thorough investigation before we can accept them. On average, a complicated claim cover decision takes 57 days. Complicated claims made up 2.3% of all new claims in 2023.

Complicated claims include:

  • treatment injuries
  • sensitive claims eg sexual violence
  • work-related hearing loss
  • work-related injury that happens over time
  • work-related mental injury
  • claims where there are more than 12 months between the injury and lodging a claim.

Find out more about how we assess claims:

How we assess claims

How we support New Zealanders

In 2023 new claims cost us around $1.9 billion. Ongoing claims from previous years cost a further $3.7 billion.

Most claims are for straight-forward injuries where we only pay for treatment. These kinds of injuries currently make up 93% of our claims.

Here's some of the support we fund that makes up the $5.6 billion cost of active injury claims:

We paid

$457m
towards the cost of elective surgery claims.

We paid

$105m
to cover the cost of accidental death benefit claims.

We paid

$781m
towards the cost of emergency hospital care.

If you're recovering from a more significant injury, we want you to have access to the right level of support, at the right time. This can include weekly financial support if you can't work due to your injury. We call this weekly compensation.

We provided 148,509 people with weekly compensation because they couldn't work due to their injuries.

We paid $2.3 billion to financially support New Zealanders when they couldn't work.

There are several reasons for declining support and we made 42,438 decline decisions in 2023. 

Injuries we don’t cover

Treatment we pay for

  • Claims are included where the cover decision is accepted or declined. Held and duplicate claims have been excluded.
  • Claims managed by an accredited employer have been excluded.
  • On the road injuries are counted where the claim is funded from the motor vehicle account.
  • At work injuries are counted where the claim is funded from the work account or the at work indicator is ‘Y’.
  • Sport and recreation injuries are counted where the claim has a sport indicator.
  • Falls at home / community are counted where the cause is ‘Slipping, skidding on foot’, ‘Loss of consciousness / sleep’, ‘Something giving way underfoot’, ‘Misjudgement on support’ or ‘Loss of balance / personal control’.
  • Injuries at home / community are all remaining claims that are not counted in one of other categories
  • Types of injuries are presented as mutually exclusive in the following priority: On the road, At work, Sport and recreation, Fall at home / community and Injuries at home / community where Injuries at home / community. Claims where more than one of the categories applies will be counted only in the highest priority relevant category. For example, a bus driver who is injured when crashing a bus will appear in On the road and not At work despite this being a work related injury.
  • New claims are counted where ACC registered the claim between 1 January and 31 December 2023. A claim may be registered immediately following an accident or at any later stage.
  • New claim costs are payments made between 1 January and 31 December 2023 for claims registered between 1 January and 31 December 2023.
  • Active claims costs are all payments made between 1 January and 31 December 2023. This include payments to claims registered in a previous year.
  • Costs are exclusive of GST.
  • Costs do not include Public Health Acute Services (PHAS) payments. These costs are for treatment in a public hospital during the acute phase of an injury and are covered by bulk payments made by ACC to the Crown. As such, these payments cannot be attributed to individual claims.
  • Please note that the cost of emergency hospital care includes some back paid costs for the 2022 year in relation to the introduction of Maternal Birthing Injury cover. This accounts for around $4.4m.
  • Data was extracted 9 January 2024 and may differ if re-run later.