Introduction
Parliament has introduced the Natural Hazards Insurance Bill,
which will replace the Earthquake Commission Act 1993 and overhaul
the Earthquake Commission (EQC).
For readers overseas, the EQC is the New Zealand government
entity which provides natural disaster insurance to residential
property owners. Currently, there is statutory insurance cover for
houses, contents, and land damaged by natural disasters.
When the Canterbury earthquakes hit in 2010 and 2011, EQC was
not adequately prepared for the magnitude of the disasters. To be
fair, this was not EQC's fault - for years they had managed the
whole country's claims with a staff of 21 people, until an
unexpected earthquake caused hundreds of thousands of claims.
However, as time wore on and claims remained outstanding, EQC
became increasingly dysfunctional.
