The recovery signal that isn’t
New Zealand’s personal insolvency numbers are falling, and on paper that reads like good news. Formal proceedings have dropped from more than 3,000 a year in 2017/18 to fewer than 1,500 in 2024/25, covering bankruptcy, no asset procedures and debt repayment orders administered by the Official Assignee.
But a falling insolvency count is not the same thing as households repairing their balance sheets. The macro narrative is starting to turn positive while a large slice of the population is still carrying recession-era damage, and the statistics that headline the recovery are measuring the wrong thing.
The KiwiSaver sticking plaster
The clearest tell is what has been rising while…