With insurance prices on the increase, it’s always a good time to review your insurances.
It’s important to know that you have the right cover in place, and of course you want to know that you are not paying too much.
We also make it easy for you to review your insurances – especially your house insurance cover, contents cover and any vehicle insurance. These can be quoted and replaced at any stage and you can review as often as you feel necessary too.
Have you got the right house insurance?
This is always an interesting question, and for many Kiwis they select the house insurance cover on price BUT that is not the right way to look at house insurance. The reason we say this, and especially with house insurance is it’s probably one of the largest assets that you’ll ever be insuring and so you don’t want to get it wrong.
Let’s look at some of the key things that you consider:
Firstly, you need to make sure that you’re insuring the house for the correct value. Most house insurance policies use a “sum assured” and there’s no point having a house that costs $500,000 to replace, but you only have $300,000 of insurance. You could easily be caught short and not be able to rebuild your house and then what do you do? You can use the Estimated Rebuild Cost Calculator to get a good idea on what it might cost to rebuild your house, and therefore what you should insure the house for. You’ll also find that the cost of insuring a little bit higher value is not going to make a huge difference to the premiums.
You then need to make sure that you’re choosing the correct option. A lot of companies that offer house insurance will have options for you to chose from. They will probably have a cheaper option for those people that are very conscious of the cost, but then they may have a more deluxe option that has some extra cover. Some of the better house insurance policies will have a full repair or replacement for certain insured events (e.g. fire, storm, or flood) which means that you are not limited by the selected sum assured.
Of course, you also want to know that you are not paying too much for your house insurance cover, contents cover or any insurance for vehicles. A couple of ways to help control costs is by selecting higher excesses and paying annually.
About Natural Hazards
What happens if you lose the whole house?
With house insurance, a total loss could be through what we might call a natural hazard such as an earthquake, a flood, or volcanic eruption or it could be from a non-natural hazard. In New Zealand we have the Natural Hazards Commission Toka Tū Ake (formerly EQC) which is New Zealand’s natural hazards insurance scheme and this is funded by a levy that forms part of your insurance premium.
New Zealand’s geography and location make us prone to a range of natural hazards. Our cover insures you against damage from:
- earthquake
- landslide
- volcanic activity
- hydrothermal activity
- tsunami
- storm and flood (land cover only)
- natural hazard fire that occurs because of any of these hazards.
You may also be covered for imminent damage, which is damage that hasn’t happened yet, but is more likely than not to happen in the 12 months following the natural hazard event.
This has been updated on 1 July 2024 and you can download a guide here which explains what is covered and the maximum that they will pay, plus what they don’t cover.
The most common non-natural hazard would be fire.
Review Your Insurances Today
It’s easy to review your insurances.
Just complete the simple form below and we will have a specialist insurance adviser make contact to answer your questions and arrange a quote. We always suggest using an adviser to ensure that you have the right house insurance cover, contents cover and for vehicle insurance too.
An adviser not only helps you select the right cover, but are there to help you if you ever need to make a claim.