A major insurer that put a halt to new home insurance policies in Westport has also stopped issuing them in a second town, in North Canterbury.<\/p>\n
AA Insurance says its decision to no longer issue policies in Woodend is due to reaching its maximum exposure to seismic risk – not a climate change-related hazard.<\/p>\n
But a local real estate agent who discovered the change says Woodend is at lower risk from earthquake damage than many of the surrounding areas, and the decision is “baffling”.<\/p>\n
The company confirmed to RNZ that it was not currently offering new home insurance policies in the township, which is about 25 kilometres north of Christchurch.<\/p>\n
It stopped offering new policies in two other Canterbury postcodes for the same reason last September – Lincoln 7608 and Rolleston 7615.<\/p>\n
AA Insurance head of underwriting Dee Naidu said limiting cover was “never something we do lightly”.<\/p>\n
“These temporary restrictions are in place because AA Insurance has reached the maximum level of exposure to seismic risk we can responsibly take on in these areas.”<\/p>\n
That exposure would naturally shift over time as customers moved, “so there will be periods where we are able to accept new policies, provided we remain within our exposure limit”.<\/p>\n
Current policy-holders were not affected and would be able to renew their policies, and transfer them if they sold their home, Naidu said.<\/p>\n
RNZ reported last week that AA Insurance\u00a0had halted new home, business and landlord insurance policies<\/a>\u00a0in the West Coast town of Westport, due to the\u00a0high flood risk the town faces<\/a>.<\/p>\n In Westport, AA Insurance wrote to Buller District Council informing them of its decision, and would also meet with district and regional council staff later this month about flood protection scheme plans.<\/p>\n Naidu said the insurer was “committed to continuing engagement with local community leaders”.<\/p>\n However, a Waimakariri District Council spokesperson said the company had not informed the council of its change in approach in Woodend. The council had now contacted AA Insurance for further information.<\/p>\n A major insurer that put a halt to new home insurance policies in Westport has also stopped issuing them in a second town, in North Canterbury. AA Insurance says its decision to no longer issue policies in Woodend is due to reaching its maximum exposure to seismic risk – not a climate change-related hazard. But […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[222,174],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16529","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latest-news","category-nz-news"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16529","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16529"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16529\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16530,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16529\/revisions\/16530"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}RNZ<\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"