Insurers likely to hike premiums to pay for costs of climate change

Insurers are still assessing the damage caused by Cyclone Gabrielle. (Image: Getty)

Thu, 02 Mar 2023

New Zealand insurers have strong enough balance sheets to weather the recent storms but will likely have to pass on the rising cost of covering the damage wrought by an increasingly erratic environment. Insurers had been paring back their levels of capital from a peak during the covid-19 pandemic but kept the solvency margins well above the regulatory minimum at 174% in the March 2022 year. That’s in contrast to the Canterbury earthquakes in the early 2010s, which tipped over Western Pacific Insurance and prompted a government bailou...

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