The Wellington-based company is making a significant investment into developing a new policy administration system to support improved innovation and efficiency whilst delivering faster and more personalised customer service.

The system is at the heart of Accuro’s day to day operations, including managing policies, onboarding new members, choosing and changing plans, pricing, processing pre-approvals and claims, and providing services to members.

After a year of development it is hoping the new system will go live in mid-June, but right now it is seeing extended response times.

It says claims are now taking nine working days, re-approvals one working day and it may take 18 days to answer a general enquiry.

"As a small team at Accuro, the additional work required to create, test and review the new system, in addition to our regular work, is having an impact on our ability to process requests from our customers within our usual fast turn-around times," the insurer says.

"For this reason, compounded by staff absences due to Covid-19, we are starting to experience a growing backlog in our workload."

Accuro has made changes to its hours and resources to try and move through this work, but the next few months will likely continue to see longer than usual turnaround times.

"Recognising that most enquiries come via email we have made the decision to trial further reduced phone hours of between 10am and 3pm weekdays.  This ensures we are still here to help when you need us but outside these hours our team can focus on responding to your emails," it says.