The Insurance Council of New Zealand, the Earthquake Commission and eight private insurers, including AA Insurance, have been working together to form a new National Disaster Response Model (NDRM).

First piloted after the 2016 Kaikōura earthquake and trialled again more recently in the July 2020 Northland floods, the partnership and agreement between EQC and private insurers will simplify the claim making process, making natural disaster claims easier for customers by providing a single point of contact for customers.

Under this new model, anyone with an AA Insurance Home Insurance policy, whose home or land is damaged in a natural disaster will lodge just one claim. This means that AA Insurance will assess, manage and settle home insurance claims for customers, instead of customers needing to claim with both EQC and AA Insurance. Once the claim has been settled, AA Insurance will recover from EQC any costs incurred on their behalf.

Included in this new agreement is the EQC claim for land damage, the EQC portion up to the statutory capped level of damage ($150,000), and then any claim under the AA Insurance Home Insurance policy to cover additional losses up to the sum insured. For multi-unit buildings, a lead insurer will be appointed for customers to liaise with.

We hope to provide our customers with more information on the changes in the coming months. If you need to make a claim before the new model is implemented, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with our claims team. Any existing EQC claims, including those from the Canterbury sequence and Kaikoura earthquakes, will continue to be managed by their current claims managers.

For further detail, please see the EQC website.