A message onscreen said the company was unable to offer insurance because of \u201cthe suburb or town where your home is located\u201d.<\/p>\n
RNZ revealed last week that the company had halted new home, business and landlord insurance policies<\/a> in the West Coast town of Westport, because of the high flood risk the town faces.<\/a><\/p>\n The insurer had also stopped offering new policies in north Canterbury township Woodend, and Rolleston and Lincoln, RNZ reported on Tuesday.<\/p>\n There, AA Insurance said that it had reached its maximum exposure limit to seismic risk.<\/p>\n The company would not confirm if new policies in Blenheim were being declined for the same reason, or for flood risk like Westport.<\/p>\n Parts of the wider Blenheim area flooded last winter after the wettest June on record since 1942, and some residents in Renwick were evacuated.<\/p>\n AA Insurance head of underwriting Dee Naidu said managing risk exposure was common practice in the insurance industry and the list of areas with temporary restrictions was not static.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are always monitoring where we are growing and the accumulation and exposure to risk from that growth. We have no plans to introduce any new temporary restrictions beyond those that have been previously reported on.\u201d<\/p>\n None of the restrictions affected existing customers, Naidu said.<\/p>\n Blenheim woman Shelley Tapp moved to the town at the end of last year and was surprised when AA Insurance turned down cover for a house she was trying to buy.<\/p>\n The agent she spoke with on the phone was unable to provide any detail, she said.<\/p>\n \u201cI asked him why, and he said, \u2018I can\u2019t tell you why, it\u2019s just too high risk\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n Tapp and her husband inspected council records and previous insurance claims and could see no problem with the property.<\/p>\n \u201cThat particular property has never had earthquake damage, it doesn\u2019t have any claims for flooding.\u201d<\/p>\n Tapp said she asked the real estate agent, who told her that AA Insurance was declining new cover for the 7201 postcode, which encompassed Blenheim.<\/p>\n The couple ended up buying a different house, insuring it with AMI instead of AA Insurance.<\/p>\n \u201cI thought there\u2019s no point me going back to AA because they told me no.\u201d<\/p>\n The company needed to be transparent with people about why it was declining cover in certain areas, Tapp said.<\/p>\n \u201cI think other insurance companies do it as well. It creates uncertainty around the property \u2013 you think, is it something wrong with the property itself?\u201d<\/p>\n Other residents who got in touch with RNZ reported a similar experience.<\/p>\n \u201cWe inquired about insuring a new build in Blenheim yesterday and discovered that AA have blacklisted Blenheim,\u201d one said.<\/p>\n Another said he had his request for home and contents cover in Blenheim declined \u201cbecause they said they were not taking on any more risk here\u201d.<\/p>\n A third person, who had been insured with AA Insurance for a decade in his previous house, said he and his wife were unable to get a new policy when they moved within Blenheim in May last year.<\/p>\n \u201cThey would not insure the new house at all. The adviser was apologetic and mentioned they wouldn\u2019t be covering Blenheim due to the risk.\u201d<\/p>\n Finance Minister Nicola Willis said it was up to individual businesses to decide how they managed their exposure to risk.<\/p>\n Treasury\u2019s annual insurance monitoring surveys \u201cindicate that there is reasonable availability of online insurance quotes in areas of higher seismic risk\u201d, she said.<\/p>\n The Natural Hazards Commission declined to comment, referring questions to the Insurance Council.<\/p>\n An Insurance Council spokesperson said insurance remained generally available across New Zealand.<\/p>\n \u201cThe insurance industry has consistently said it\u2019s important New Zealand takes a long-term view on the risks from natural hazards as we face the prospect of more frequent and severe events due to climate-related events.\u201d<\/p>\n The council supported \u201ca government-led approach to mitigate and adapt to changing climate and an agreed set of natural hazard and climate risk data so we are all on the same page\u201d.<\/p>\n The current Natural Hazards Commission levy, and the cap the commission paid out for natural hazards claims, were sufficient to maintain insurer confidence, the spokesperson said.<\/p>\n \u201cThe real solution lies in proactively reducing underlying risk, including avoiding development in high-risk areas, investing in resilient infrastructure, improving building standards, and sharing consistent natural hazard data.<\/p>\n \u201cThese steps would reduce losses and signal to global reinsurers that New Zealand is managing its risk exposure, helping to stabilise costs.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A message onscreen said the company was unable to offer insurance because of \u201cthe suburb or town where…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":266048,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[17184,27505,2082,1345,17053,50577,2517,661,117,111,43,78751,139,69,10269],"class_list":["post-266047","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-blenheim","tag-declines","tag-for","tag-home","tag-insurance","tag-insurer","tag-kate","tag-major","tag-new","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newton","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-policies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266047","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=266047"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266047\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/266048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=266047"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=266047"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=266047"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}