An entry from Ruth Gardner's blog for 31 January 2012 entitled, "Insurance Increase".
Latimer Square
A Christchurch insurance advocate says the new Canterbury Earthquake Insurance Tribunal may finally be the solution to get unresolved claims from the 2010 and 2011 Canterbury earthquakes settled. The government has launched an earthquake insurance tribunal to try to finally resolve outstanding insurance claims from the Canterbury earthquakes. Dean Lester, who acts as a insurance claim preparer in Christchurch, told our reporter Rachel Graham the tribunal will have the power to get on and make a decision on the key sticking points, without people facing the huge cost of a high court trial.
Insurance is widely acknowledged as a key component in an organisation's disaster preparedness and resilience. But how effective is insurance in aiding business recovery following a major disaster? The aim of this research was to summarise the experiences of both the insurance industry and businesses dealing with commercial insurance claims following the 2010 and 2011 Canterbury earthquakes.
We examine the role of business interruption insurance in business recovery following the Christchurch earthquake in 2011 in the short- and medium-term. In the short-term analysis, we ask whether insurance increases the likelihood of business survival in the aftermath of a disaster. We find only weak evidence that those firms that had incurred damage, but were covered by business interruption insurance, had higher likelihood of survival post-quake compared with those firms that did not have insurance. This absence of evidence may reflect the high degree of uncertainty in the months following the 2011 earthquake and the multiplicity of severe aftershocks. For the medium-term, our results show a more explicit role for insurance in the aftermath of a disaster. Firms with business interruption insurance have a higher probability of increasing productivity and improved performance following a catastrophe. Furthermore, our results show that those organisations that receive prompt and full payments of their claims have a better recovery, in terms of profitability and a subjective ‘”better off” measure’ than those that had protracted or inadequate claim payments (less than 80% of the claim paid within 2.5 years). Interestingly, the latter group does worse than those organisations that had damage but no insurance coverage. This analysis strongly indicates the importance not only of good insurance coverage, but of an insurance system that also delivers prompt claim payments. As a first paper attempting to empirically identify a causal effect of insurance on business recovery, we also emphasize some caveats to our analysis.
He's been fighting the insurance company since the 2011 earthquakes.
Many small businesses in Canterbury are struggling to stay afloat after the earthquake and an insurance and risk management consultant, John Sloan, says one problem is the long wait to get insurance money.
How much are insurance premiums going to increase by after the Christchurch earthquakes?
Christchurch homeowner Bob Burnett says lengthy delays in resolving his earthquake insurance claim is destroying his finances and affecting his kids' health. He's calling for a Royal Commission into the conduct of the insurance sector.
Two Christchurch Scout groups say their national body is refusing to give them insurance payouts for earthquake damage.
Overlapping claims and general confusion are delaying money payable to New Zealand for damage from the Canterbury earthquakes. The money involved is payable through reinsurance schemes taken out by insurance companies in this country, with firms overseas.
The Canterbury earthquake is tipped to increase insurance premiums across the country.
The Earthquake Recovery Minister and the Insurance Council both deny that insurance companies pressured the Government to relax building guidelines in Canterbury.
The Insurance Council has shot down criticism the industry may be delaying earthquake claims for financial gain.
We measure the longer-term effect of a major earthquake on the local economy, using night-time light intensity measured from space, and investigate whether insurance claim payments for damaged residential property affected the local recovery process. We focus on the destructive Christchurch earthquake of 2011 as our case study. In this event more than 95% of residential housing units were covered by insurance, but insurance payments were staggered over 5 years, enabling us to identify their local impact. We find that night-time luminosity can capture the process of recovery and describe the recovery’s determinants. We also find that insurance payments contributed significantly to the process of economic recovery after the earthquake, but delayed payments were less affective and cash settlement of claims were more affective in contributing to local recovery than insurance-managed rebuilding.
Thousands of people are making insurance claims after heavy rain and flooding in the north of New Zealand, especially in Auckland. Insurance lawyer Peter Woods has worked on property claims for earthquake damage in Canterbury and Marlborough.. He has also been an Independent Specialist Adviser to the government. Peter talks to Lisa Owen.
Gaps in the government's insurance cover will leave many schools damaged by the earthquakes in Canterbury out of pocket.
Canterbury earthquake victims say they've got new cause for anxiety - whether or not insurance companies will reinsure them.
The insurance company, Tower, has strongly criticised the time it's taking to settle Canterbury earthquake claims and says the insurance system for handling such disasters is broken.
Insurance cover has been cancelled for Christchurch's historic Arts Centre and its Catholic Cathedral which were both badly damaged in the February earthquake.
A man representing New Zealand reads a newspaper whose headline is ''Quake may cost insurance co's up to $16B'. Above him is an enormous mosquito that represents 'increased premiums' and that is about to suck the blood out of him; it casts a huge menacing shadow in which the man stands. Context - Insurance companies have experienced massive losses after the Canterbury earthquake. This may ultimately result in higher premiums as insurance companies try to recoup from their loss. According to Chris Ryan, Insurance Council chief executive, "The quake would probably result in foreign reinsurance companies increasing the premiums they charged local insurers." (Stuff 9 Sep 2010) Quantity: 1 digital cartoon(s).
The cost of insurance could rise by 20 per cent as a result of the Government bailout of AMI Insurance and the mounting cost of the Canterbury earthquakes.
Graphs showing the status of business insurance claims.
The logo for a series titled, "Quake insurance".
The Christchurch city and Waimakariri District councils have from today got no insurance cover for future earthquakes after their existing policies expired at 4pm.
The Serious Fraud Office has launched it's first investigation into earthquake insurance fraud in Christchurch which could involve tens of millions of dollars.
Two years on from the Christchurch earthquakes, a local author says the insurance industry has failed in its response to the disaster.
The man who heads California's earthquake insurance agency says Christchurch is much better placed to recover from earthquake devastation than his state.
The Earthquake Recovery Minister, Gerry Brownlee, says he's lost patience with the private insurance industry over delays in settling quake related claims.
Official figures show the Christchurch City Council's legal bill to settle its earthquake insurance claims is sitting at nine million dollars, and climbing.