{"id":317199,"date":"2026-03-07T05:53:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-07T05:53:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/317199\/"},"modified":"2026-03-07T05:53:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-07T05:53:10","slug":"rma-reforms-iag-nz-says-consequences-of-getting-act-wrong-is-development-cant-be-insured","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/317199\/","title":{"rendered":"RMA reforms: IAG NZ says consequences of getting Act wrong is development can\u2019t be insured"},"content":{"rendered":"

New Zealand\u2019s largest insurer, IAG NZ<\/a>, says there\u2019s ambiguity in reforms to the Resource Management Act<\/a> around proportionality and risk-based planning.<\/p>\n

And the consequences of getting that wrong, IAG NZ\u2019s executive manager of corporate relations Bryce Davies says, is development that can\u2019t be insured.<\/p>\n

New Zealand\u2019s largest general insurer, IAG NZ, trades under the AMI, State, NZI, NAC, Lumley and Lantern brands. It also provides general insurance products sold by ASB, BNZ, Westpac and The Co-operative Bank.<\/p>\n

Davies and IAG NZ\u2019s government relations manager Andrew Saunders appeared before Parliament\u2019s Environment Committee on Thursday, to speak about the insurer’s submission on the RMA reforms.<\/p>\n

One particular section in the Planning Bill stood out to IAG NZ. Focused on goals in clause 11<\/a>, a sentence about managing natural hazards<\/a> says the aim is \u201cto safeguard communities from the effects of natural hazards through proportionate and risk-based planning\u201d.<\/p>\n

Saunders told the Committee the use of the word \u201cproportionate\u201d appeared more like a standalone concept rather than being integrated with risk-based planning.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe think it is supposed to be \u2018proportionate to the risk\u2019 but it doesn\u2019t quite necessarily say that.\u201d<\/p>\n

He says they did propose alternative drafting.<\/p>\n

\u201cReally, it\u2019s just the idea that it needs to be proportionate to the risk.\u201d<\/p>\n

Davies says the Bill had a lot of the building blocks there; \u201cto make good decisions but it doesn\u2019t necessarily require a good decision\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not sitting here saying we should be aiming to eliminate all risk. That\u2019s a fool\u2019s errand.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re never going to achieve that but there are sensible, rational, economically wise choices that we can make and want councils to make in a consistent way across this country to \u2026 kind of bend the curve \u2026 on natural hazard risk,\u201d Davies says.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs we grow, we create more risk, right? It\u2019s inevitable but what we should be doing is proportionally creating less risk over time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe should be making better decisions over time and we believe that needs a lot more kind of much more intentional approach and that intentionality needs to be part of this Bill,\u201d Davies says.<\/p>\n

Asked by National MP Catherine Wedd, who is also chairperson of the Environment Committee, what an example was of where the wording around \u2018proportionate\u2019 and \u2018risk-based planning\u2019 may not work or create worse situations, Davies says: \u201cThe consequence of getting that wrong is development that can\u2019t be insured<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOr it becomes really expensive and it interrupts people\u2019s ability to service their lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAll the classic cascading impacts of expensive insurance and insurance that is not available<\/a> \u2026 flows through into banking and flows through into people\u2019s economic wellbeing,\u201d Davies says.<\/p>\n

While getting that wrong individually is one thing, Davies says: \u201cIf you start to get that wrong at an area-wide level for whole communities, that has a very profound effect and a cascading effect over the long term.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEspecially when we\u2019re making choices here under this Act that are going to last for a very, very long time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Davies says the success of this Bill requires \u201cclear system goals, clear national direction about what is an acceptable level of risk, consistent high quality hazard data and models, and sufficient capability to be able to implement all of them\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New Zealand\u2019s largest insurer, IAG NZ, says there\u2019s ambiguity in reforms to the Resource Management Act around proportionality…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":317200,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[138,219,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-317199","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317199","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=317199"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317199\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/317200"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=317199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=317199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=317199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}