14 Mar 2019

Wellington homeowners struggling for insurance - agents

From Morning Report, 8:10 am on 14 March 2019

Real estate agents in Wellington say house buyers are already having difficulty getting earthquake insurance cover and they expect the problem to get worse. IAG, which owns the State, AMI and NZI insurance companies, is no longer offering contents or housing insurance to new customers in the Wellington area, because it has a 53 per cent share of the Wellington market and says it needs to reduce its exposure to risk. Gareth Vaughan from Interest.co.nz says the Commerce Commission used to be extremely soft on allowing companies to merge - and its decision to let IAG to acquire AMI in 2012 and then Lumley in 2014 was a mistake. He speaks to Susie Ferguson.