Weather insurance claims soar
In the past 18 months, insurers have paid out more than $265m for 15 serious events
The cost of weather-related insurance claims has increased by over 70 per cent in the past three years alone, an insurance broker says. With a large storm making its way down the country yesterday, NZbrokers chief executive Jo Mason warned small and medium businesses to do more to prepare for adverse weather events.
Mason said new insurance claims resulting from storms and flooding had increased 56 per cent in the past three years, accompanied by a significant spike in the cost of claims.
According to industry data for the past 18 months, insurers had paid more than $265 million for 15 serious weather events in New Zealand, the largest being for ex-cyclone Debbie, where $91.4m was paid to Edgecumbe alone.
With New Zealand now ranked as a “high hazard” country for natural disasters by the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery, it was of particular concern that ocean temperatures were among the warmest on record and global sea levels continued to rise.
“While we were already rated as a high risk for seismic activity, now storm and flood losses in our market are on their radar as well,” Mason said.
“At the same time, data from the World Meteorological Organisation is projecting the number of weather disasters will continue until the 2060s.”
No particular regions of New Zealand were shown by the data to be at more risk than others, Mason said.
“Weather events may cost less than a serious seismic event but the increasing frequency and geographic spread of events show every business in New Zealand should be prepared.”
The wild weather that battered most of northern and central New Zealand yesterday is expected to continue today.
Campers were evacuated from spots in the Coromandel Peninsula and at Piha on Auckland's west coast and civil defence staff in affected regions were on high alert.