There's no sign of the rate of business failure slowing, despite hopes the economy may be inching towards recovery.

Insolvency practitioner Keaton Pronk, of McDonald Vague, said, at the end of September, there had been more winding up applications in the year to date than in any other year for the past 10 years.

He said there were 138 applications to wind up companies advertised during the month and 1072 in the year to date. That was higher than any full year total between 2017 and 2023, and more in the nine months to September than in the past two years.

A winding up application is usually made when a business is not able to pay its debts.

If the company cannot reach agreement with its creditors, they can go to the High Court to apply to place the company into liquidation.

Pronk said Inland Revenue was still behind a lot of the activity, responsible for 80 percent in September.

He said corporate insolvency appointments were on track to hit their highest annual total since the global financial crisis, with 2411 recorded to the end of September.

"Despite ongoing discussion around business restructuring and rescue, New Zealand companies facing financial distress are still far more likely to end up in liquidation than attempt a formal turnaround process."

It comes after Centrix data showed there were 3105 liquidations recorded in the year to August, 14 percent higher than a year earlier.

Pronk said he expected little to change this year.

Two more cash rate hikes, as widely predicted, would keep the pressure on, he said.

Simplicity chief economist Shamubeel Eaqub said the rate of insolvencies at 4.1 per 1000 registered companies was better than the 6.6 in 2009.

Court-ordered liquidations, at 1047 in the year to September, were up from 280 in 2022 and the most since 2009, he said.

With 61,648 companies incorporated in the year to September and 52,168 removed, the net growth of 9480 was the lowest since 2016.

But he said it was notable that the median age of businesses made insolvent was 7.2 years, compared to six in 2019 and 5.3 in 2019. "It's not just newbies or Covid."

But he said Centrix data showing business credit faults down 1 percent year-on-year on a rolling 12 month basis could be a signal that things would eventually improve.

Alan McDonald, head of advocacy and strategy at the Employers and Manufacturers Association, said times were tough for small businesses in particular but most of the insolvencies were due to Inland Revenue action.

A softer approach during the Covid years meant some businesses had let tax debt mount to the point where they could not get on top of it, he said.

"The two biggest things we're hearing at the moment are that they're cutting back on memberships … because times are tough, or they're going out of business."

He said the underlying numbers were there for an improvement but it would take time to work through. "Smaller businesses who've been hanging on for a long time are doing it hard and are still doing it tough. Most of the people we're talking to are saying 'we can see it coming, it's getting a little easier maybe we've hung on but it's still tough'. They can sort of see it on the horizon but, man, it's still tough."

But individuals were becoming in solvent in much smaller numbers.

There were 947 personal insolvencies in the first nine months of 2026.

That was more than 2024 and 2025 but well below the levels of 2018 to 2021, when the number regularly topped at 1500 and got as high as 3000 in a year.