WELLINGTON, Feb. 27 (Xinhua) -- The New Zealand Reserve Bank on Tuesday published new quarterly statistics that will provide insights into the structure and activities of the country's insurance industry.

The newly published statistics provide aggregated financial data provided by licensed insurers, and new statistics will help provide insights into the insurance industry's financial performance and position in New Zealand, Head of Macro Financial Stability Bernard Hodgetts said in a statement.

"New Zealand's private insurance sector is relatively small by international standards. This reflects a number of factors, including the comparatively large role of government in the provision of social insurance services in New Zealand, and the small extent to which insurance products are part of New Zealand's retirement savings infrastructure," Hodgetts said.

Tuesday's release provides industry analysis sourced from the Reserve Bank's Quarterly Insurer Survey, which covers 28 out of 88 licensed insurers currently accounting for just under 90 percent of assets and premiums of the insurance industry as a whole.

These larger insurers earned premiums of 9 billion NZ dollars (6.6 billion U.S. dollars) over the year to September 2017, while gross claims were 8 billion NZ dollars, said statistics manager Steffi Schuster, adding that these insurers held assets worth 21 billion NZ dollars and liabilities of 14 billion NZ dollars at the end of September 2017.

"The release today of a new set of statistics is part of a multi-year initiative towards providing comprehensive data on the New Zealand insurance industry," Schuster said.