New Zealand insurers and brokers – who at present enjoy a minimalist approach to regulation, will be regarding the latest KPMG-Business NZ Compliance Cost Survey with some concern this week.

The survey says the average NZ business is spending $NZ53,011 in compliance costs this year, compared with $NZ36,075 last year and $NZ45,179 in 2003.

Small enterprises with five or fewer employees bear compliance costs of around $NZ3604 per employee per year, while an enterprise with more than 100 employees faces compliance costs of around $NZ247 per employee per year.

The report says tax is also a concern for businesses and has increased by almost 10% over the past year.

Business NZ CEO Phil O’Reilly says these latest figures are higher than other recent compliance cost surveys. The difference is in the survey sample, which includes all business sizes. Surveys which cover only small to medium-sized enterprises show results which are skewed downwards and hide the true compliance cost burden.